Picture Perfect
by Hi Pot And News
Summary: AU. Fem!Harry. James Potter was not an only child, he had an older brother from his father's first marriage. Leonardo Potter married an ambitious woman, one that's willing to do just about anything to get what she wants; what she wanted was a daughter.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: **Hello, all. This is a story I've been tentatively been working on for a while. It's nowhere near done and it likely won't be done any time soon. After I finish posting the chapters already finished, I won't be adding an more until I finish one of my other stories and have more time to focus on this. Please don't get too attached too soon.

* * *

**General Disclaimer: **This will apply for any future chapters I might add as well. Seriously, this is the only disclaimer for this story. If you recognize it, it's not mine. If you _don't _recognize it, it's probably still not mine. Any writing of mine will be a patchwork of things I think are cool ideas from other people, sewn together by the thread of my personal writing style.

Please have patience with me since I have several stories on the back-burner, not yet ready for uploading, that also take time to write. My updates will be irregular since sometimes I'll have nothing to do but write and other times, I'll be way from the computer for days at a time.

* * *

**Early spring of 1954**

**I**t was near sunset and corpulent rain clouds approached from the east. Under the shelter of pillars and a roof, Charlus Potter paced the length of the mid-sized pavilion that stood in the garden of his family's summer cottage with an air of unfettered anxiety. They had sworn they would meet this afternoon, this the first day Charlus was back from his week-long business trip in Russia. It was nearly two hours after the agreed upon time of their meeting, but his darling was still nowhere to be seen. Needless to say, this concerned him greatly.

As the rain finally reached the Potter property, the sound of hurried footsteps on the stone pathways made Charlus look up with hope. Was it her?

"Natalie?" he called out, peering through the mist.

The trembling form of his darling sprang forth from around one of the winding hedges and ran straight up the pavilion steps towards him. She collapsed into his arms and sobbed as if the world were coming to an end.

"Natalie, dear-heart, what has happened?" Charlus inquired while taking inventory of her appearance. A deep green dress soaked through and clinging to her skin; boots caked heavily with mud; black hair plastered to her scalp from the water and no ornament in sight. He gently lifted her face and noted the black kohl smudges around her puffy, red cat-curved eyes.

"He's disowned me!" she sobbed. "That cruel bastard disowned me and ripped the knowledge of the locations of the family homes from my mind! He ordered my mother and sister to never speak of me again!"

"Your father?" Charlus breathed. What could have brought this on?

Natalie pulled back and sucked in a shuddering breath. Charlus carefully led her over to the cushioned seat and encircled her in his arms. He gently stroked her rain-slicked hair, and rocked her back and forth.

"It was horrible," Natalie began, rubbing one eye with the heel of her palm. "I mentioned in passing to my sister at dinner last night that I was coming to see you today. It was the first time in several months that the whole family _—_ my sister, my parents, and me, I mean — have sat down together that I hadn't even realized that not everyone knew you were courting me. Fern knew, but Mother and Father were unaware. Father flew into a rage at not being informed!

"Oh, Charlus, you wouldn't believe it, he told me that I was to stop seeing you immediately because he had agreed to an arranged marriage for me with one of his business associates' son! He agreed to it without telling anyone else about it — he hadn't even mentioned it to mother! — and he expected me to just fall in line and accept it!" Natalie snarled.

"I told him I wouldn't do it, of course," she continued, looking despairingly into Charlus' eyes. "I want to stay with you and I have several reasons for not doing it but I wonder if you would rather I had agreed to it instead if you hear one of the major reasons."

"There's no reason in the world I would want to give you up to some stranger!" Charlus said, clutching her hands in his. "Whatever your reasons, I support them."

"My first reason is, of course, that I love you, Charlus, and couldn't dream of being anyone else's wife. The second reason is . . ." here she hesitated and looked at their intertwined hands.

"What is it, darling?"

"I'm pregnant," she whispered, looking pale and withdrawn.

Charlus sucked in a breath and looked at her in awe. Natalie, not looking at his face, only heard the gasp and curled into herself, looking resigned.

"I know this is a burden I put upon you — what proper gentleman would accept a child born out of wedlock?" she rushed. "But know that I will not burden you further if you no longer want anything to do with me or our _—_"

"Natalie!" Charlus exclaimed, giving her a slight shake to cut off her babbling. "How could think such a thing of me? A child is a blessing no matter how one comes about, and ours is a blessing more favourable than I could have ever dreamed. A reason to no longer be with you? It's a reason to finally complete our courtship and be married at once! I could not be happier!"

"Truly?" she asked, stars of hope shining in her hazel eyes. She looked shyly down. "I was so worried. It was the main reason father disowned me. When I told him, he flew at me and tore away a good amount of our family secrets before mother could stop him and distract him for a while. My sister managed to smuggle me some of my belongings into the trunk I keep shrunken in my charm bracelet but father came charging in to burn my things and threw me out of the house before I could get anything else.

"I was so scared you would behave in the same manner," she confessed, seeming ashamed. "I was afraid I'd have to take care of our child with no support."

"I'll not turn you out, of course, but why do you not appeal to your uncle? He's the head of your family, isn't he? You spoke fondly of him; surely he'll not let you be abandoned thus?"

"I might have if my knowledge of where he lives was not taken from me as well," Natalie answered bitterly. "My father truly meant for me to have no one to turn to. I surmise he expected you to turn me out as well."

Charlus fell to one knee if front of his darling and extracted a ring box from his pocket. He presented the modest but beautiful ring to Natalie who had tears in her eyes. He slipped the ring onto her finger and said, "Nataniicha Sutgird — Natalie, my love — will you marry me?"

Natalie nodded vigorously in response, happy tears trailing down her face.

"Let us tell my parents at once!" Charlus exclaimed, leaping to his feet and pulling Natalie along with him. "Mother has been badgering me to end our engagement and marry as soon as possible to start making her grand-children. I'm sure they'll be over the moon about our announcement!"

Completely disregarding the rain, the smiling couple made for the house hand in hand.

"What shall we name our child? do you know if it will be a girl or a boy yet?" Charlus asked, a pleased grin on his face.

"Maybe Valerian if it's a girl," Natalie mused. "I've always loved that name. But definitely Leonardo if it's a boy."

"Leonardo," Charlus said slowly, testing the sound of the name. "I like it."

* * *

**March 27, 1960**

**D**orea Potter laid panting and gasping in bed, having gone into labour three hours previously. Her usually bouncing curls subdued by the layer of sweat coating her face and trickling about her head as she tossed her head about in agony. A midwife had been called for from the village and was doing her best to make the Lady Potter comfortable but there was only so much one could do.

"It's almost time," the midwife muttered to the Lady's anxiously awaiting husband. Charlus Potter was clutching his wife's hand in a death-grip and was looking on in mute terror. She assured him, "Nothing to fret about, m'lord. First babies always take the longest and hurt the most. She'll be perfectly fine."

Charlus gave no response, thinking back to the last time he had witnessed a child of his being born. His first wife, sweet Natalie, instead of merely gasping and wailing in pain, had taken up her wand and shot curses at him, screaming about how he had done that to her and should be included in the pain of childbirth. Seeing Dorea — proud Dorea — now, barely restraining herself from outright sobbing, he couldn't help but agree the tiniest bit.

Thoughts of childbirth and Natalie brought Leonardo, who was currently in his room, hiding from the screaming, to mind. His quiet Leonardo who had thought of his father before himself and encouraged Charlus to find another wife after the appropriate mourning time for the death of Natalie had passed and Charlus made no move to find himself another wife.

"Find me another mummy," the three-and-a-half year old Leo had said, looking him seriously in the eye. The lad had not said much since Natalie had been killed by that werewolf when he was two. "One that will hug me and make you smile like mummy used to. One that will give me a little brother to play with too."

And so here he was almost two years later, about to witness the birth of the little brother Leo had asked of him. Dorea had been delighted with the idea at the time and said she would get right on it. No doubt she was currently wishing she hadn't made such a promise.

"Here it comes!" the midwife declared, drawing Charlus' attention back to the situation at hand. Both midwife and lord hovered frantically over the grunting and heaving Dorea. At last, the shrill wail only a newborn could produce cut through the tense anticipation, making Charlus heave a sigh of relief and plop ungracefully into the chair behind him. "He's certainly got a pair of lungs on him!"

"What will you and your lady name him, m'lord?" asked the midwife, cradling the baby in one arm and gently wiping the sweat from an unconscious Dorea's forehead. "She'll wake no later than tomorrow. It's just exhaustion."

Charlus delicately received his son and rocked him slightly, staring into the pink face of his new son.

"His name is James."

* * *

**E**xcerpts from the personal diary of the Countess of Hautmont:

_December 23, 1979_

__**Experiment 217: G-**___**η**___**7**__

_**Modifications:**__ Natural pigmentation lightened by two shades; UVA and UVB ray resistance increased by a factor of three to counter the decrease of pigmentation; eye colouring (green) lightened by two shades; colour impurities of the eyes (brown and blue) removed; bone-structure: approximate growth-pattern of shoulder-width decreased by 8%, finger length increased by 6.25%, facial structure re-formatted with lighter jaw-line and smaller nose._

_**Improvements:**__ Hereditary astigmatism made dormant; hair follicles altered from hereditary wavy to __loose__ curls; recessive hereditary Veela gene made dominant (this leads to raptor vision and enhanced hearing); dominant hereditary inclination towards obsession (a mental condition inherited from an ancestor that married into the family?) made recessive._

_**Enhancements:**__ Expansion of the pupil and iris (By-product of the Veela gene allows for the manipulation of the eye more readily); vocal cords restructured for a wider pitch range; brain growth accelerated for higher cognitive functions._

_Current scans detail a steady rate of development with less that two percent chance for unexpected deterioration. Alterations and modifications have been successfully assimilated by the genetic material and is now being acted upon as if they were the original coding. All modifications have been thoroughly checked over for instability but show no signs of deconstruction. If development continues uninterrupted, the subject should be capable of independent existence in five to six months._

_I do believe I've finally done it. After __four__ exhausting years __of research, two tedious years of experimentation, __and six failed variations, I've finally done it. Merlin, save me, I've really done it! _

_She's coming. _

_She's viable. _

_And she's a girl! _

_After so many boys, at long last, a girl! _

_One would would have thought that from six separate conceptions there would have been at least one or two females thrown in but of course, my darling husband had to be ideal nobleman and begot me only sons. I took care of them as soon their magic gave them away, of course, but I was beginning to get rather exasperated with him. I have no problem with giving him sons but I will have a daughter for a first-born if I have anything to say about it. _

_It's gotten very frustrating for me to go through all those potions, and spells, and rituals to assure my child will be exactly as I want only to discover later on that either certain potions reacted badly with each other and resulted in an abnormality, or the child was growing into a boy, completely destroying the point of the unparalleled beauty I was attempting to ensure. I felt like ripping my hair out! I actually dosed Leo with Hippolyta's Revenge the last time we laid together to assure that this time, I'll be getting my girl. Hippolyta's was primarily used back in the time of Zeus and his fellow Greek sorcerers by the Amazonian queens but it's just as effective now as it was then._

_I truly can't begin to express how . . . euphoric I feel at the moment. All the experiments __—__ of the η sequence at least __—__ are finally coming to a close and I am on the edge of gaining my masterpiece. No more brewing of volatile potions, no more runes stones pressed to my belly, no more memorizing chants! Finally! My vision is nigh!_

_I've wanted my treasure since I first heard the tale about the hag, Sophia, and her step-daughter, Snow. Hair as black as ebony, skin as pale as snow, and lips as red as fresh blood; Snow's mother had the right idea. Not the usual style I'd use __—__ I lean more to a livelier skin tone with less dramatic colouring __—__ but magnificent when done properly. Who wouldn't want such beauty for their daughter? And now I'm finally going to have her, my precious little treasure. The last scan for the magical signature showed that she's definitely a girl. _

_Lucky number seven. _

_How curious that seven should be such prominent number in this situation. Experiment 217: G-η7. Two hundred-seventeen is divisible by seven, G is the seventh letter in the English alphabet, and η is the seventh letter in the Greek alphabet. Very curious indeed. Quite the coincidence._

_Leonardo doesn't know, of course. He's not the type of man to care about heirs, he's always so caught up with his research, just like he always was back in school. I'm actually rather glad he's never cared much about this sort of thing or else he might have been concerned when none of our couplings resulted in a child for him. I feel a smidgen guilty about the boys but I don't have any use for a son at the moment and a pretty son would be doubly useless. In any case, I'm sure Leo will be delighted with the angel I'll bestow upon our family and the pride she will bring us._

_She'll be far more perfect than my sister's daughter, that's for sure. Apolline was all a-flutter when she found out her child was a girl, and halfling as well. Finally, I'll have something far better than Apolline ever will. Let's just see her try and top this genius bit of __—__ what do the muggles call it, again? __—__ genetic engineering. My sweetie will be incomparable on top of being a halfling and won't that just shut up all those relatives that thought my sister so much better than me? Fleur is very pretty and proving to be talented but she'll have little in comparison with my darling masterpiece. Other children will seem like pale caricatures when compared to her. _

_She'll be perfect in every way. I'll make sure of it._

_Oh, what shall I name her? Elise? Adelaide? Hartford? Blaine? Faustine? Claudette? It must be distinguished and tasteful. Perhaps I'll ask Leo about it when I tell him that I'm pregnant. _

_Oh, I just can't wait!_

_The Right Honourable Countess of Hautmont,_

_Lady Diane Potter_

_August 13, 1981_

_Just got back from Apolline's. Late birthday presents were received and all was well. The house was secure and no one besides the family even knew we were there, even the housekeeper was given the day off because we were coming. _

_The girls are getting along famously. Fleur is officially the favourite cousin. I've never seen Harrington get along so well with anyone, but then I suppose I haven't really given her many chances to have playmates. James and Lily's boy, Jacob, is an easily accessible friend, especially since we're all still holed up in the manor together but a girl needs some girl friends. Jake's a sweetheart and such a little dear __—__ those hazel cow-eyes! __— __but he just doesn't have the proper plumbing._

_I'm now completely positive the brain-growth acceleration prenatal potion I took during the last second trimester was a success. Not only has Harrington kept up easily with Fleur, but the tests I've run on my darling shows that she is running on the mental equivalent of a three or four year old and that she started actively remembering things even before birth. I wonder if that means I've manufactured genius? I did wonder how she was potty-trained so quickly. I should look into teaching her to read and write soon. If I bring her around Apolline's little girl often enough, I could have her fluent in both English and French as well!_

_They were just so cute together today. As Harrington's already been speaking for a couple of months now, we were teaching them to sing Alouette._

_Alouette, gentille Alouette, (Little lark, nice little lark,)_

_Alouette, je te plumarai. (Little lark, I will pluck you.)_

_Je te plumarai la tête_ (_I will pluck your head,)_

_Je te plumarai la tête (I will pluck your head.)_

_et la tête (and your head)_

_et la tête (and your head)_

_Alouette (Little lark)_

_Alouette (Little lark)_

_O-o-o-oh!_

_And it would continue on with mentions of plucking beaks, eyes, wings and tails. I always felt the song was a tab blood-thirsty, especially considering what we are but the girls seem to enjoy it even though Fleur seemed to share my opinion._

_"Plucking wings?" she asked when she thought about what she was saying. "Who wrote such a mean song?"_

_"Larks are noisy things in the morning," Apolline had reasoned. "No doubt it was someone fed up with their racket and was feeling very grumpy."_

_"Then why does Jamie like this song so much if it's for grumpy people?" Fleur replied, pointing at Harrington who was clapping and humming still. She has trouble pronouncing the "H" in Harrington so has recently resorted to using an abbreviated form of 'Jamison', my darling's middle name. "She sings it so happily, it's kind of scary."_

_Maybe when all this fighting clears up, we can form a girls' choir. Besides Fleur's need to question the music material, the girls seem to enjoy singing and Harrington would get to hone her skills and get her used to being on a stage. She'll be the most accomplished Lady ever known and really, who would want an untalented wife?_

_I wish this blasted war was over already and for that thrice damned Dark Lord to just drop dead already. How am I supposed to raise a healthy and happy heiress during all this violent nonsense? If everyone important is too busy fighting, how is my perfect little angel supposed to get the appreciation she deserves? Apolline's being such a dear about this, though. It's nice to know she won't allow us to become estranged even though the rest of the Potters and I have become major targets._

_I do wish someone would tell be exactly why we're being targeted but everyone just tells me not to worry my little head about it whenever I ask. Even Leo, though that might be because he just doesn't like thinking anything about it. Despite what some may think, I'm not some air-headed twit with nothing below the surface; being talk down to in such a way infuriates me. I didn't graduate among the top of my class at Beauxbaton and marry well because I'm a fool._

_That wife of James', that Lily, does quite a bit of talking down to me. Why, I don't know, since besides being clever with Charms and pretty in face, she's really has no talents; she can't sing, or dance, or paint, or play an instrument. Oh, she's sweet enough to your face and admonishes James whenever he's being a brute but if she thinks someone is below her – though I don't know how she could think that, knowing how common her birth was – she's not above sticking her nose up. _

_One would think _**_**she**_**_ was the Lady of the House for all of the belittling she does of me. Give a muggleborn a Mastery and a well-paying job and suddenly they're sneering at us who were fortunate enough to be born into respectable families and had privileged upbringings. Isn't that called reverse-discrimination or something like that? Because they were not so lucky, they look down on us that were? That would be like me thinking I'm better than her because she's a muggleborn. Hypocrisy is what that is!_

_And I _**_**don't**_**_ think I've better than her because she's muggleborn. I'm better because I'm more skilled and accomplished, I'm of a higher status, and I'm prettier than her; my birth is just a bonus. If we were something like horses or broomsticks, no one would feel obliged dispute my reasoning because it's politically correct to do so among people of their political leanings. I really don't know why people have to drag feelings into everything; the straight-out facts take you so much farther._

_I'm getting off topic. My frustration at this situation is rubbing off on to other areas as well and making me more irritable than usual. I wish Lily would stop treating me like furniture with a face and I wish someone would tell me why we're being hunted. All this stress is terrible for my skin._

_For all their secrecy, it's not as if I can't make an informed guess, what with James and his 'secret' vigilante group showing up at odd hours and whispering to each other when they think no one's listening – something about a prophecy and unknown powers – but I'd appreciate being given some hard facts so I can know what to expect. _

_Really now, what if that murdering madman of a Dark Lord has heard of my darling's unrivaled beauty and wants to spirit her away until she's old enough to be his consort? They shouldn't dismiss me so, a mother needs to know these things!_

_The Right Honourable Countess of Hautmont,_

_Lady Diane Potter_

_July 3, 1982_

_We're popping out for a bit to go shopping for birthday presents. How odd it is that Harrington and Jacob were born on the same day. It was as if little Jake knew I planned to have a Healer in to have Harrington extracted on the thirty- first and decided that it was a perfectly agreeable day for him as well. Little tyke rushed it a bit, what with him being born a few hours earlier, but I suppose it really did make everything more convenient for everyone now that they can share birthday parties. I must thank him for this properly when he's old enough to understand._

_I'm not really sure why I'm writing this now instead of waiting until we get back so I can detail the things we bought but I had the queerest feeling that I should do it now. It's a sort of prickly feeling and now I simply can't leave without writing this down first. How very odd. _

_Maybe it's a premonition and it'll turn out that Harrington will find this diary while we're out today and read it, trying to find out what presents she'll be receiving. _

_If you're reading this, pet, you know better than to play about with Mother's things. Put the diary down and finish your German lessons. If you're done by the time we get back, you'll get a second slice of cake for dessert._

_If I hear word about you playing with Jake on that broom again, I'll be very upset. Ladies do not indulge in such boisterous games, as I've told you several times before. Such unladylike behaviour could attract the attentions of undesirables! And you can be certain I'll be asking your Aunt Lily about it too! Don't be surprised if it turns out she 'tattled' on you. I'll be asking the moment we get home._

_The Right Honourable Countess of Hautmont,_

_Lady Diane Potter_

* * *

**July 5, 1982**

**J**ames Potter, now Regent of the Noble House of Potter, sat slumped in an armchair, weeping bitter tears for his recently killed brother and sister-in-law. Lily sat on the right arm of the chair, holding his head to her chest and stroking his hair, also immeasurably sorrowful.

"The just popped out to get presents," James said mindlessly, clutching at the sleeve of lily's blouse. "Just for a few minutes. Everything was already paid for and wrapped; they needed maybe five minutes at most, out in Diagon, before they could come back. It was supposed to be safe."

"I know, darling," Lily murmured, laying her head on his.

"They weren't even targets," James continued, starting to raise his voice. "They were disguised and the Death Eaters weren't even trying to kill anyone but that _damned_ building still fell on them. It was an ACCIDENT!"

Lily shushed him and rubbed his back. "Not so loudly, James, the children are asleep!"

"And what about Harry!? Lily, what if Diane's family try to take her from us? What if they say she's not safe with us as take my niece from me as well? We can't lose little Harry as well!"

"James, James, it'll be okay. We won't let them take Harry. They won't be able to find us remember? We're still under Fidelius."

"They'll try!" James insisted, a crazed light in his eyes as he yanked his hair desperately. "You know they'll try! The way Diane described her family, I'm surprised they're not knocking on the door right now. We gotta do something, Lils, something that'll make sure they'll never — short of outright kidnapping her — be able to take Harry away from us! It would be like them trying to take Jake away!"

"Alright, alright," Lily soothed, her mind buzzing through possible ways to achieve what James wanted. "I'm sure there as several ways to do what you mean. We can look up adoption ceremonies. Don't worry so much, we won't lose her."

James sobbed. "I can't lose any more of my family, Lils."

* * *

The Daily Prophet

November 2, 1982

**PETER PETTIGREW ARRESTED FOR THE MURDER OF RABASTAN LESTRANGE!**

_By Nadia Grimshaw_

In a continuation of unbelievable events, it has come to air that Peter Pettigrew, former friend of the recently martyred Potters, was actually the one who betrayed their whereabouts to the Death Eaters, resulting in their death by You-Know-Who's own hand, just before their surviving son, Harry Potter, defeated You-Know-Who.

(Refer to the November 1st edition of the Daily Prophet to read more on the Boy-Who-Lived)

What his motives were can only be speculated on but afterward, in what we might assume a fit of insanity, instead of trying to avenge his master or going into hiding to evade the Aurors, Pettigrew went after Rabastan Lestrange, younger brother to Rudolphus Lestrange, a well-off businessman who was recently murdered by his insane wife.

(More on the murder of Lestrange on page 6)

Multiple Aurors gave their statements about what they witnessed at the crime scene.

"He [Pettigrew] was just standing there, laughing," said Junior Auror, John Dawlish. "Half the street was torn up straight down to the pipes the muggles have under their roads, and bodies were strewn everywhere. What could be found of Lestrange was a smear of soot on the side-walk with his fading signature on it. And the crazy bastard was just standing there, cackling, and saying, 'I killed them! It was me! I'll kill all you bastards too and I'll see you in Hell!'"

"I've no idea what Lestrange had in connection with Pettigrew," said Bartemius Crouch, Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. "There was no known past history between them, not even back in their school days, when they both attended Hogwarts. We can only assume Pettigrew had gone insane, possibly the magical backlash of You-Know-Who's death utterly destroyed his mind, and his dysfunctional mind then came up with a perceived slight Lestrange committed against him. The only thing I've absolutely sure of is that Pettigrew is going to be locked up immediately for the rest of his natural life. His crimes are too vast for anything else."

(More on Pettigrew's arrest on page 5)

* * *

**O**n a windy afternoon in early November, behind a shady willow tree in an empty park, a pair of witches, one an adult, the other a small child, appeared from nowhere with a sudden crack. The elder had a professional look on her face and after making sure the child was not dizzy or disoriented, led them at a comfortable pace down the street.

The neighbourhood could be described as posh. The houses were tall and well-kept with sizable front and backyards separated by well-groomed hedges. The street the pair were currently walking down was Anise Avenue in the suburb of Greater Whinging. Expensive cars were parked in the driveways and a few houses were spotted with children playing in the front yards. Their destination was two roads down and third from the corner, Number Six, Willow Way.

As they walked down the tidily kept side-walk, they received a few curious looks from some of the children playing outside, but they were readily overlooked, what with the people of this neighbourhood respecting privacy and generally being not very nosy. They ambled in comfortable and undisturbed silence.

"This is it," the older witch said, looking down at her smaller companion. "Are you ready?"

The little girl only nodded.

In sync, the pair walked up to the door of Number Six and the older woman grasped the knocker and knocked on the door three times. There was a moment of waiting before they heard, "Coming!" Not a minute later, a tall, thin woman with an equally thin face answered the door and looked curiously at them.

"Yes?" the thin woman asked. "Can I help you?"

"Mrs. Petunia Todd? I'm Cordelia Oglethorpe from Magical Child Welfare. I believe I called you yesterday about taking in your niece?"

Petunia Todd's face turned grim. "Yes, I remember." She gave the sombre girl beside Ms. Oglethorpe a speculative once-over before nodding at the pair. "Please, come in. My husband is home and I'm sure he'd like to hear the whole story as well, as I would again."


	2. Chapter 2

**O**n a muggy evening, somewhere near London, a young girl with long, dark brown hair painstakingly restrained, brutally pulled back, and sculpted into an exaggerated braided bun, sat behind an antiquated piano off to the side of a slightly elevated stage that was currently playing host to quartet of teen-aged musicians. Her fingers dutifully flew over the keys of the piano with an ease that spoke of years of practice, while her eyes took in the crowd. It was a black-tie affair taking place in a rented, high-end, banquet hall. There were dining tables spread through-out the hall where sat a goodly amount of the posh and privileged that regularly showed up to these sort of things.

She was curious-looking thing; her face so much like a china doll's, she wouldn't look out of place sitting on a shelf; a bit on the small side for her age (bullies in her gymnastic class called her 'scrawny'); rather long fingers. On a regular day — that is, when she wasn't being pranced about like a show pony — her hair threw it's excessive weight around in aggressive curls and waves that seemed to have a life of it's own. Pale eyes a shade of shocking green peered out from under a long fringe floating about her face that hide the most curious thing about her; a lightning bolt scar that ran down the side of her right temple.

"That's where it happened," her aunt and uncle told nosy people that asked. "That's where that crazy murderer managed to cut her before help came and someone got her out safely." That, of course, was when the inquiring person become horrified, apologized for asking, and never mentioned it again. It wasn't the truth, but it was close enough to the truth that they didn't feel bad for saying it.

Despite her curious looks, not one person was paying her any special attention at the moment so she allowed her face — which she had fixed into a polite, closed-lipped, smile with wide, equally polite, faintly interested eyes — to settle into an expression of suppressed discontent. It had been hours since she had began playing — over an hour since her last break — and this was the last performance, she reasoned to herself, scanning the crowd over again, surely she could allow herself to rest her facial muscles at the very least. She covertly flexed the muscles in her fingers and longed to loosen her braids to relieve her scalp of the throbbing tautness of her torturous hair-do. If beauty was indeed pain, she must have been a breath-taking sight.

The quartet off to her right was from some prestigious secondary school that she couldn't, for the life of her, remember. Saint Something-Or-Other's Private Academy for Smarmy Snots, possibly — and if it wasn't, it damn well ought to be. The youngest of the quartet, a thirteen year old named Alec, managed to insult and thoroughly talk down to her all while trying to impress her, the self-important swot. In fact, most of the groups that had graced the stage thus far were from supposedly prestigious origins, one way or another. Primary schools, secondary schools, universities, independent studios; all forms had come represented for this gathering of string players. A fundraiser of some sort, or a competition.

Or, quite possibly, the girl grumbled to herself, some tedious fund-raising competition sponsored by one of Aunt Petunia's fat-headed business associates, hell-bent on exploiting children for their own gain. The event charged for entrance, dinner, and also encouraged donations for whatever it was they were supposed to be fund-raising for. The groups competing were not getting paid, she didn't think, they would only be getting a trophy if they won. Where in the world was the money going?

Mercy, she thought yet again. Wasn't that the _fifth _time they repeated that section? Surely they ought to be near the end of the song. Perhaps that stupid quartet represented a school for the amnesiac and actually _c__ouldn't_ remember that they played that part before. Maybe _that's _where the money raised was going to go.

Her thoughts were then disrupted by a displeased, pinch-faced look from her aunt, sitting at a table just off stage, whom had finally given her a glance and found her without the appropriate face on. At once, the girl slipped back on her pleasant expression and banished her previously uncharitable thoughts. It didn't matter any way to herhow the money was going to be used. She'd be paid her usual rate and it sure wasn't coming from the donation pile.

At long last, the performing quartet reached the end of their everlasting song, and she accompanied them off with a flourish. The lead violin player — not Alec but snooty enough to be Alec's clone — somehow managed a particularly pompous bow, with lots of arm waving and ramrod-straight back, all the while doing an impression of someone with their nose trying to fly away from them. His companions then followed his lead off the stage, their noses also scraping the plaster off the ceiling.

I wonder if there's a class for that, she speculated as she dipped into a slight curtsey. If there was, likely it would be a core class that everyone that wanted to attend that school has to take. You can't be a proper Smarmy Snot if you couldn't look down your nose at someone at just the right angle. And the prize for being the top of that class would be the privilege to lead the lesson during sneering practice.

"Come along, Harrington," said her aunt from the steps of the stage; the brisk tone pulling her out of another bout of uncharitable thoughts.

'Harrington' dutifully followed after her Aunt Petunia down from the stage and towards a table that seated the event coordinator and the aforementioned business associate, her eyes trained on the black high-heels her aunt favoured, never looking right nor left or even allowing her eyes to cut across the crowd again.

Don't bow your head but keep your eyes downs and walk lightly, without hesitation; that's the way of being invisible in a crowd. Don't give them a reason to notice you. Being unnoticed in plain sight was one of the few useful things she'd learned while being dragged around by her aunt all these years.

The pleasant expression was another thing, 'Harrington' thought as she smoothed down the back of her ridiculously frilly skirt and sat down at the table, next to whom she assumed was the event coordinator's son. The expression's relaxed enough not to be fake but has just enough up-turned lip to be considered a smile. Hard to be suspicious of it since there's nothing suspicious about it.

She turned this expression on the rather awkward looking boy seated next to her while the adults at the table got reacquainted.

"Hello," she said quietly, nodding to the boy after a moment of uneasy silence in which he openly gawked at her. "I'm Harry."

The boy reddened unbecomingly and shifted a bit in his seat. He looked about twelve, gangly, with the beginnings of acne rearing their unappreciated heads on his forehead and around his nose. The suit he was wearing looked a bit too short as if he'd had a growth spurt but didn't realize it in time to have his suit re-tailored. His light brown hair was parted severely to one side and slicked down with a liberal amount of hair gel which seemed to be the same look his father was sporting. Over-all, he looked quite uncomfortable in his skin and seemed rather surprised that Harry was even acknowledging him.

"Eugene," the boy mumbled, not used to girls talking to him, let alone more or less smiling at him, his voice cracking a bit on the second syllable. He cleared his throat in embarrassment then said more a bit confidently, "I'm Eugene Fitz-Carlton. Nice to meet you. Are you Mrs. Todd's daughter?"

Harry despaired at the fact that the boy wanted to keep speaking beyond the obligatory greetings.

"Her niece, actually. I live with my Aunt and Uncle."

"Oh, sorry," he replied, flushing a bit at his assumed faux pas, then tried out a more nonchalant expression. "Do you often come to these sort of things?"

Was that a variation of 'Do you come here often'? Was he trying to feed her a pick-up line?

"Hmm, yes. Aunt Petunia likes to have me at things like this. I suppose your father brings you to these things often?"

"I'm actually only here tonight because I go to one of the participating schools. I go to school with that last group actually."

"You came to cheer them on?"

"All of the school's string orchestra is here tonight. It's considered a participation grade — "

"Well, hello there!" cut in Eugene's father with a surprised tone, as if just noticing Harry sitting there. Eugene looked a bit put-out about being dismissed so but gave no complaint, just sitting back with his lower lip poking out a tad. Mr. Fitz-Carlton leaned forward and gave her a grin with a surprising amount of gleaming teeth. While still looking at her, he addressed her aunt, "Petunia, would I be correct in assuming this is your talented niece I keep hearing about?"

"Yes, this is my Harrington," Aunt Petunia confirmed smugly, as if Harry were a particularly fashionable hair ornament that she'd worn just for the occasion.

After a flash of irritation, Harry quickly concluded, like she'd concluded several time before, that her aunt ignoring that she hated being called Harrington was not worth the effort of arguing with.

Her aunt reached over and fondly patted the top of Harry's bun. "I've been meaning to introduce her to you for a while now so I figured I'd get her especially prettied up for tonight since I don't believe you've ever even seen her before. Have we made a good impression?"

"She's _adorable!_" cooed a vague-looking blonde woman Harry thought might be the wife of the sponsor. "And she played so prettily!"

"Wonderfully!" Mr. Fitz-Carlton agreed. "From what I've heard, I expected her to be a bit older. Yvonne was raving to me the other day about how she wept like a baby at your niece's rendition of Ode to Joy. Inspiring, she called it. She went on and on about how many instruments she played and how beautifully. I was expecting a serious-looking young woman in her twenties. Imagine my surprise when this little lady sat herself down at that piano and showed us how it's done!"

The table shared a laugh and gave Harry indulgent looks, like admiring a pet that had performed a difficult trick. She ducked her head bashfully and smiled sweetly at them in return, wondering if they were naturally that condescending or if they received instruction on it. Or maybe she was just in a terrible mood and expecting the worse of everyone. Such moods often overcame her.

Aunt Petunia gave her another fond pat while Eugene gave her an admiring look. The table started in on the usual vague discussions adults get into when they were trying to sound worldly and terribly high-classed, in this particular instance, going on about composers and their famous pieces. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven; Aunt Petunia even got ambitious and mentioned Paganini's Devil's Trill.

Eugene and Harry glanced at each other at the same time in exasperation. Eugene flushed and gave a goofy grin when Harry's lips curved into a more pronounced smile.

Mr. Fitz-Carlton had caught the look Eugene had sent her and glanced at both of them with consideration before a gleam of calculation entered his eyes. "You've mentioned before that she's home-schooled, right? Eugene here goes to St. Christopher's and they accept boys _and _girls. The music department would likely jump at the chance of getting such a talented new student. If she's half as intelligent as I'm sure she is, she'll slip right in quite easily with the rest of the third-years. And she'll already have a friend to start off with!"

Aunt Petunia looked on in vague confusion for a moment before sweeping her gaze over Harry, realization hitting her. "Oh, goodness me! It must be how tall she looks in those boots and the way I fixed her hair! Harrington turns eleven in three days; I'm sure she'd be more suit for the first year if anything."

"Oh?" Mr. Fitz-Carlton with faint disappointment. The expression was echoed more pronouncedly by his son. "I was so certain I remembered you saying something about have a child entering their third-year."

"Yes, my son, Benedict. He's my oldest, then there's Dudley who's a month older than Harrington, and then Ashford who's nine years old. I'm not surprised you might have gotten them a bit jumbled since I don't bring them to these kinds of things. My boys respond better to normal schooling instead of at home like their cousin, so I don't have the same chances to bring them along with me during the day. That and young boys aren't known for the patience to sit quietly for several hours, as I'm sure you know."

He laughed, "I suppose I should count myself lucky that Eugene is such an easy-going lad, in that case." He gave his son a pleased look. "Get's that from his mother. I'll never have to worry about _him_ going off and setting something on fire."

"I'm sure he does you proud."

"Is she going to continue being home-schooled then?" asked the sponsor, Mr. Edwards, a greying gentleman sporting mutton-chops. "I'm sure you've been educating her properly, of course, but joining a good secondary school now and a university later would only add to her credentials if she ever has need of them."

"Ah, yes," Aunt Petunia said smilingly, leaning forward with a self-satisfied look on her face. "We were originally going to send her to a school of Performing Arts but a few days ago we received a letter requesting her attendance at a school for the gifted.

"Very private, you know. It's been around for hundreds of years I've been told, but they're very low key so not many people have heard of it. I'm not exactly sure how they sort through applications but I do know that children of alumni have priority. My sister went there; that's where she and her husband met. I supposed I shouldn't be surprised that Harrington's following in their footsteps but it does do me proud to know she's going somewhere special."

The rest of the table look suitably impressed.

Oh, she was very good. Aunt Petunia was making it seem like she couldn't be more pleased that Harry was going to that school. That Hogwarts place. She probably _would have_ been delighted if it actually was the type of school she was making it out to be. Though one _could_ call it a school for the gifted if one considered having magic as 'gifted.'

The acceptance letter had arrived during breakfast, the day after Dudley had gotten his new Smelting's uniform, his birth father guaranteeing him a place at his high-end alma mater _and_ paying for the expenses, even though he didn't really want anything to do with Dudley. Probably he just wanted someone to follow in his footsteps.

The Todd family was a bit unusual. Their sons were all half or step-siblings. Benedict and Dudley as step-brothers and Ashford as a half-brother to both of his older brothers and also technically a step-brother to Dudley as well. It was all confusing and Harry was very glad she had remained just a cousin instead of being legally adopted as well. It was enough to tie a mind in knots.

Petunia and Michael Todd had met at a garden party after Michael's former wife had died — leaving him with his one year old son, Benedict — and Petunia was engaged to some tosser named Vernon Dursley. They became fast friends; he appreciated her cool business mind and she in turn appreciated his straight-to-the-point attitude. Petunia even invited him to the wedding she and Vernon were planning. A bit after that, they became more than friends when it was discovered that she was pregnant and Vernon had immediately ran off — he had _not _wanted children.

Petunia had fumed for months, angry instead of hurt, before she and Michael started courting. They married not long after since both of their sons needed stable families and they really did get along quite well. Ashford's birth had only added on to their happiness, Michael had always wanted lots of sons and Petunia enjoyed being needed.

When Harry came into their lives as the unnaturally stoic two-year-old daughter of Petunia's dead, estranged sister, they weren't sure what to do with her. Petunia had been shocked to hear that her sister and her husband were dead and was doubly horrified to find out that they had been murdered. Her uncompromising resentment of Lily died that day, replaced with regret that she never reconciled with her sister before she died. Petunia could only hope to do right by Harry in atonement even if she still didn't want anything to do with magic.

Harry was a puzzle to them; She didn't get into mischief like Benedict, she didn't cry or fuss like Dudley, she didn't demand constant attention like Ashford. She seemed almost like an adult in a child's body with how little she seemed to need either of the adults beyond being fed.

She spent most of her time sitting quietly; sometimes looking over a spare picture book or staring at a stuffed animal. _Staring _at it, that's what made the couple a bit nervous when they thought about it. Not moving it about or making noises like Benedict and Dudley did when they played with their toys but just holding it in her lap, looking at it blankly unless she was told to put it away for later.

The boys adored her, though. Her unwavering stare applied to people as well and their sons couldn't get enough of such undivided attention when they were used to Michael spending long hours at work and having nannies when Petunia wanted rest. Ashford couldn't do much active fighting just yet but his two older brothers were perfectly capable of doing outright battle for Harry — if you could call pushing, whacking each other with stuffed animals, and juvenile name-calling battle. In any case, she seemed to enjoy how much they wanted her for themselves and at times seem to goad them into it by batting her lashes cutely at one brother while the other watched.

Petunia wasn't sure if she should have been amused that her boys saw Harry as the princess-locked-in-a-tower-to-be-rescued-and-won-over type, disapproving that her niece got her boys more worked up than usual, or grudgingly proud that Harry was already skilled in use of feminine wiles.

Was that normal behaviour for magical children? Michael had asked that of Petunia. He had been sceptical of magic when he was told about it but the child-services witch that had come to drop off Harry had proved it to him by transforming into a bird. Petunia replied that Lily was not like that as a child but she wasn't sure about magical people who had not been born from the non-magical.

"It might be the trauma," Michael had said. "That child-services woman did say Harrington was in the room when her parents were killed. Something like that could really mess a kid up. I'm surprised we haven't been dealing with screaming nightmares or catatonia. Being rather stoic seems tame in comparison."

After six months of no notable change, they were starting to despair and began considering taking her to a child psychologist. Harry accepted touch and physical affection; she allowed Benedict and Dudley to drag her around while they played. She ate properly, did as she was told, and had facial expressions. But she was like that since she arrived. She never smiled and rarely said anything. She always looked a bit ashen or ill. Was she getting better? They couldn't tell.

"Harry's so sad all the time," Benedict had told them in a fit of keen observation, nearly cracking one of his cousin's ribs in a bear hug. "I give her hugs 'cause those always make me feel better when I'm sad. She's still sad so she needs more hugs."

It was on Ashford's first birthday that the couple's mind was put at ease. They had been planning a little birthday party for a week. Just a small family event but Michael took the day off and Petunia had pre-ordered a birthday cake. She had helped the children paint pictures and make little craft items for birthday presents. Harry had dutifully used the newly bought art supplies to paint what looked like stick figures in party hats standing around a giant cake, but afterward looked rather dissatisfied with what she had made.

After the song had been sung, cake had been passed out, and presents opened, Harry opened the kitchen window and let a little bird in that had been perched on the window-sill. Petunia and Michael were all set to scold, secretly relieved that their niece was finally showing some childish naughtiness, when they were stopped mid-rise from their seats by Harry whistling and the bird responding.

At her signalling the bird flit about in front of Ashford, doing what could only be described as an aerial dance. Loops. Turns. Dives. It even landed on Ashford's high-chair at the end and chirped the birthday song as Harry whistled the tune. The boys were delighted, Ashford especially, clapping and squealing, cheering the bird on. When the little bird finished it's song, they all applauded, Michael with great enthusiasm since he'd been wanting to see more magic after that first time.

Harry had looked absolutely radiant as she conducted the bird about. She had always seemed not completely there, like a faded photograph that was left in the sun too long and lost its vibrancy. But at that moment it was if whatever it was she was missing was suddenly right there; she was whole again. And when they began to clap, the sweetest smile graced her face. It might have been slow going, but Harry was getting better.

Over the years, Harry had continued showing an unusual talent in controlling her magic. It was never anything that was obviously magical; birds that responded to command could have been trained without magic, learning how to play instruments from the instruments' memories of being played could be passed off as prodigious natural talent. It was subtle and controlled instead of catastrophic and accidental.

If Petunia had been more magically savvy, she might have been curious, but instead she was thoroughly pleased that Harry didn't _seem_ completely out of the ordinary. She had even begun convincing herself — as she carted her niece about to perform at garden parties, dinner parties, weddings, and the like — that Harry wouldn't even have to go to Hogwarts since what Harry could do wasn't really _magical _as it was a show of genius. That might have been part of the reason why those people had given the child over to her! Even if she _was _technically magical, surely she wasn't magical enough to go to that blasted school.

'Her version of wishful thinking,' Harry decided, taking a sip from the glass of water in front of her, pretending to follow the boring conversation in front of her about prestigious schools even though her thoughts were miles away.

When Aunt Petunia saw the acceptance letter in the mail pile, she had gone frighteningly pale before flushing a furious red.

"That damned letter!" she had snarled, snatching up the envelope before smacking it against the table, making the silverware clatter.

She'd gone off on a rant about how none of that obnoxiously bizarre insanity that her sister had made happen had gone on around Harry. Sure, her most notable talents were a bit unusual but she'd never made things fly around or change colours or made wilted plants bloom. Obviously, Harry wasn't unstable like Lily was. In what way did she need further education in magic? Sure, she herself would be happier if Harry couldn't do magic at all — the unnatural nonsense! — but she managed it just fine without being a blatant weirdo about it. Far more than any of those other freaks could claim!

The children were ushered out of the kitchen by the latest nanny as Aunt Petunia worked herself up into a fine froth.

It had taken Uncle Michael — who was surprisingly at home for a few days instead of at work, piloting an aeroplane — a trying amount of time to calm Aunt Petunia back down and convince her that since they themselves knew very little about magic, they wouldn't be able to know what an actual proper education was for a magical person. Surely the school wouldn't have contacted them if Harry _didn't _need to go to a magic school.

"A person doesn't go to the hospital with a broken leg just because the feel like it."

Surely it would be better to have the experts give Harry the same education her sister received if only for the fact that it could be potentially dangerous for Harry not to be taught.

"What if Harry had to be taught things by a certain age or else she'd die? What if magic is like water being poured into a glass and if it isn't regularly used up in a certain way, it spills over and something terrible happens?"

In the end Aunt Petunia agreed they'd all be safer off with Harry getting the normal — "If you could call anything about that strangeness_ normal," _Aunt Petunia had muttered — schooling her mother received when she was that age. It wasn't _Harry's _fault that she had been born with magic any more than it was her fault for having green eyes. Still — in the same way you wouldn't stay to watch another person eat something you thought completely revolting — Petunia wanted little to nothing to do with magic.

It was for this same reason that Aunt Petunia had recently taken to pretending nothing was wrong while completely avoiding what she felt was an elephant in the room, barely spending any time dragging Harry about any more and even refusing to take her to Diagon Alley for her school supplies. Instead, she rang up the child-services witch for someone to take Harry. She came once every six months to check up on Harry, maybe _she _would know someone available.

"They sent the Deputy Headmistress to take my sister to that shopping district the first time around without having to be asked. It was mentioned in the letter Lily got that someone would come. I assumed they did that for all children from normal families," Aunt Petunia had said with a bit of irritation.

"That's the standard procedure for muggleborn children at most schools," Ms. Oglethorpe had confirmed. "However, Harry would be on the school register as a wizard-born. The situation you're in is rather unusual since magical children normally go to their nearest magical relative if their parents can no longer take care of them. Because of this, you should have received the standard Hogwarts letter for wizard-borns. They will probably send a representative if you send them an owl."

"Where in Heaven's name would I find one? The letter didn't come with an owl to send the letter back with. Pet stores don't sell them and even if they did I doubt they would be trained to carry letters!"

"Hmmm, this is very unusual but I could come around on an off day and take her myself if that works for you? I'm assuming you haven't replied to the letter yet so we'll have to make it before the thirty-first to have time to get an owl for the return letter."

"Yes, that would be lovely, thank you. Let's make it the twenty-ninth so there will be plenty of time for the letter to get there."

"Alright, I'll see you then."

Now it was the night before the twenty-ninth and Harry could hardly think of anything else. She was so excited in a way she'd never felt before. She was finally going to learn proper magic!

She had always known about magic, of course. Ms. Oglethorpe always came with magical presents during her visits. Harry had a corner in her room — the only corner _not _being used up by sheet music, instruments, or art supplies — as a shrine to those possessions. A training Snitch; the Archimedes Forbes series; a yo-yo that changed shape every time it rolled down; a pair of steel-toed boots from Benedict that he had given to Ms. Oglethorpe to be enchanted so that they could turn into ice skates or roller skates at the click of her heels; things like that. Magic, while not really a huge part of her life at the time, was ever present.

Harry was secretly thankful to have those little reminders of magic to ensure she didn't forget more than she already had.

Something she had never told her relatives was that she could remember her parents. She couldn't remember specific events but she remembered being held and sang to. She wasn't sure why everyone assumed she couldn't when it was known that children started actively remembering around their second year, and she had been a few months older than two when they died, but she remembered them well. In fact, she remembered them well enough to know — even before Ms. Oglethorpe had told them on her eighth birthday — that Lily and James Potter were not the parents she had been born to.

'A bit too well, then,' Harry had thought one day as she snatched the silver Snitch from above her head. She had been dragged into thoughts about parents from Dudley's prattle about an up-coming parent-teacher conference.

Her memories were strange. She was not one of those people with an eidetic memory — she still had trouble keeping up with the schedules her aunt made for her — but her first memories definitely came from before she was around two years old. For goodness' sake, she had hazy memories of laying in a cot while some nurse, speaking in rapid French, hovered over her! It was blurry in parts but she could honestly say that Mum and Dad, while loving and kind and had treated her with as much care as their other child, their own son, were _not _her birth parents.

Ms. Oglethorpe had come on her eighth birthday looking both anxious and excited. She had been digging around at the Inheritance Department at Gringotts since it was about the time heirs of Noble Houses began learning about their duties. She had been shocked to learn that James and Lily had actually taken in their orphaned niece right after her parents, the late Lord and Lady Potter, had been caught up in a Death Eater raid and killed. Why did no one know about this? She hadn't known James Potter even had an older brother! From what she had been told, the aristocracy was under the impression that James had been Lord Potter since his father died back when he was in his seventh year of school. No wonder he never took up the Potter mantle and ran off to become an Auror instead; that was never his responsibility to start with!

But then, this all meant that Harry really had no familial ties to the Todds. Would they still want to remain her guardians? Aunt Petunia had made it very clear the first time Ms. Oglethorpe came with Harry in tow that she wanted as little as possible to do with magic and was taking Harry out of a sense of duty and a desire to honour her sister's memory. It wouldn't be inconceivable that Petunia might become upset enough to turn Harry out.

Ms. Oglethorpe had phrased it as delicately as she could when revealing to them that Harry was actually adopted. Very thoroughly adopted with a goblin bonding ritual, exchanged blood, and being listed under them on the Potter family tree but still adopted none-the-less. She had been surprised when Harry had looked at her blankly before telling them that she always knew she was adopted and had thought they had known as well.

Aunt Petunia had further surprised Ms. Oglethorpe by shrugging it off and saying, "I might have known. She hardly looks anything like my sister besides the eyes and that shade of green is lighter than Lily's."

Ms. Oglethorpe had then taken Harry to the Potter family vault to find journals of past Heads of House detailing their experiences and duties. She didn't have time to look through the other books or talk with the portraits because Aunt Petunia had told them to come back immediately but she promised herself that she'd get herself well acquainted with all the interesting things in the vault one day soon.

Maybe she'dl be able to get that better look tomorrow at Diagon Alley, Harry thought happily over her plate of roast that she was poking at.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: **For anyone who might be wondering, I imagine this Harry like Alexis Bledel in Tuck Everlasting, with Ryan Newman's eyes, lips, and jawline. As for her hair, well, think of Merida from Brave but shorter and a dark brown colour that looked red in the light. This, of course, is only a rough estimate of the image in my head but I figured, there'd be readers that like a picture to go with the story.

This chapter's a little awkward in places. I hope you'll forgive me but the truth of the matter is, my original plot for this story started during fourth year; I started from the middle and now I have to fill in the beginning.

* * *

**M**s. Cordelia Oglethorpe, middle-class half-blood from an unimportant family, scatter-brain who had difficulty paying attention to details, relatively unknown office worker for the Department of Magical Child Welfare, had a secret. It was actually a really good secret too, especially considering that she was about the last person anyone who wanted to know that secret would expect to have that secret. It was for that very reason — besides her sense of duty and morals — that she kept this precious secret very close to her chest. She guarded the secret as fastidiously as an Unspeakable guarded their section of the Department of Mysteries.

Ms. Oglethorpe knew where Harry Potter was. More than that, she was the social-worker assigned to young Potter's case and had regularly been to the place that Harry Potter was living. Her assignment to their precious child-saviour had been very hush-hush. It had been kept so quiet, no one, not even her co-workers, knew that Harry Potter even_ had_ an assigned worker in the Child Welfare Department. The only other person besides Dumbledore that she knew for certain knew of her position was the recently retired Department Head and _he _had agreed to a memory charm to help conceal the secret.

It was widely assumed that little Potter had been spirited away directly from the ruins of the cottage in Godric's Hollow to mystical parts unknown, where he spent his life with an entourage of bodyguards — sort of the Knight's of the Round Table to Harry's King Arthur — following him on epic adventures that one wouldn't usually assume to happen to a child less than ten-years-old. There were series of books dedicated to Harry's speculated accomplishments, from Apparition at the age of five to soothing rampaging hippogriffs with nothing but his voice at seven. She was glad Harry hadn't actually done any of that since it would have made her job a lot more difficult.

The truth of the matter was that Harry Potter had been sent to live with muggle relatives in an upscale but completely mundane neighbourhood a week after being carefully checked over by a healer and being assigned a child-services agent. She was quite certain there had been no apparition and that the only hippogriffs the child had ever seen were in books. For goodness' sake, Harry wasn't even a boy! Ms. Oglethorpe had seen to _that_ quite clearly when she had escorted the then two-year-old saviour to the loo because she was still too little to climb onto the toilet by herself. She had no idea why everyone thought the sweet little lass was a boy but her position left her with the inability to correct anyone when they started telling tall tales about the 'Boy Who Lived'.

Her heart had gone out to the Potter girl when she had been given the details of that October night. After James' body was moved from it's position at the bottom of the stairs, Harry had been found in the half destroyed nursery, so blank and unmoving, they had though her under a curse to turn her into a living statue. Lily Potter's body was crumpled on the floor, her torso half on the bed as if reaching out for her children still, even in death. The bed was a nightmare of splattered blood from where poor little Jacob had been cut and crushed by falling ceiling chunks; the killing blow, a hit to his temple by an especially sharp shard.

Harry had sat there for who knows how long, dazed from the Dark Magic that clung to the wound on her head, too aghast to move away from the body of her brother, letting the blood soak into her pajamas.

It was too cruel a fate.

It was perhaps an even crueller fate when it had been decided that she would be sent to her maternal aunt to live among the muggles.

Cordelia was no blood purist, what with her own father a muggleborn from a respectable background, but Petunia Todd rubbed her the wrong way. She was no child abuser, she would do her duty by her niece, she'd most likely bring up Harry to be a capable person, but Cordelia doubted Mrs. Todd would go beyond duty and love the child. The way the muggle woman had wrinkled her nose at any mention of magic had concerned her; would Mrs. Todd hold it against Harry? Cordelia had only hoped that Mrs. Todd's husband would temper any stand-offishness his wife might show to Harry.

To her relief, Harry assimilated into the Todd family rather comfortably. The resilient little girl seemed no worse for wear after an understandable amount of time to let the shock of the death of her family to ease into the back of her mind.

Such a sweet girl, Cordelia sighed. So agreeable and quiet, though she really did wish little Harry would liven up a bit. It might have been her natural disposition, but the way Harry seemed perfectly at ease with just sitting and listening quietly for extended periods of time ("Sitting there, looking pretty," as Benedict called it) was more suited to a world-weary grandmother than a child of any age. Where was drive to get into mischief? Where was the need to get up and play? The passion to explore?

Cordelia approved of how the Todds had Harry take up the piano when she showed talent at it. A valuable skill she could work at and take pride in! It wasn't running around and being childish but it could work. A creative outlet through a positive medium could only help her in the long run. That Harry was taken out to perform and already earned money of her own would only make her more independent when she grew up.

Cordelia occasionally frowned to herself when she thought of the way it had been discovered that Harry was talented at piano. At any instrument, really, Harry had told her when the topic came up.

It had been during Harry's first year at primary school and she had been in music class. She was sitting by her cousin Dudley and his friends, off to one side of the cluster of children sitting on the floor. The other girls, headed by a brunette named Alice Baumgardner, generally disliked her for whatever trivial offense and had taken to pretending she didn't exist when they couldn't get in a jab at her when the teachers weren't looking. Fortunately, they hadn't even one chance that day since Dudley had decided that Harry wasn't going to be out of his sight for even a minute any more.

"You'll sit in the middle of us and that's the end of it," Dudley had said. The large, blond boy cracked his bulky knuckles while giving the nearest girl an ominous look. "If they want at you, they'll go through my fists first; I don't care if they're girls!"

That day, the music teacher, Ms. Glass, was letting them pick out any instrument they wanted to play and gently nudged them toward a cabinet with simple, durable instruments like recorders and xylophones.

"When you're all settled, we'll learn a song to play for your parents after class," Ms. Glass told them.

The school had invited the parents in observe their children's progress get to know the teachers. It was supposed to encourage feelings of involvement and show off how well the kids were doing. Several of the know-it-alls were eager to prove how much better they were than their classmates and had eagerly asked their parents to come; Alice Baumgardner among them.

While the other children settled themselves with easy instruments — Harry herself, picking out a set of wooden xylophones — Alice tossed her light brown hair and declared," Ms. Glass, I'd like to play the piano. I've been taking lessons."

The teacher had hesitated but conceded when she saw the determined gleam in Alice's brown eyes; she was quite familiar with the girl's pig-headedness. She only put in a token warning: "Try not to slam the keys too hard, it's a rather old thing and I've had it for years."

What followed could only be called cacophony; recorders were over-blown, xylophones were chimed out of time, tone-deaf children tried to sing, and Alice was not nearly as good at piano as she thought herself to be. When the class period was nearing the end and the parents were rejoining the class, the only thing that could be said for the students was that they learned to be on beat.

The parent, of course, thought the performance utterly charming. There were coos and the flashes of cameras, followed by enthusiastic clapping.

"Feel free to pick up any of the instruments and play with your children," the music teacher encouraged the doting parents. "I'm sure they'll have more fun with you involved."

And so the families and students spread out across the room, discordant melodies inter-mingling. Harry and Dudley made their way over to Dudley's parents, who were standing near the recently vacated piano.

"Watch where you're going, Potter!" Alice hissed, as she bumped shoulders with the smaller girl, rushing over to her parents. Harry gave her a vaguely annoyed frown but ignored her.

The two of them greeted Harry's aunt and uncle smilingly, Dudley starting in on how much fun the xylophone was and how he wanted one too. Harry paid only minimal attention to the conversation, being distracted by the shiny white keys in front of her. It was as if there was a pulsing from them that she could somehow feel. She soon found herself seated at the piano and stroking the keys absently, letting her fingers glide from one end of the piano to the other.

"Give it a try, then," her Uncle Michael said, making her glance up in distraction. Her Aunt Petunia gave her a considering look before nodding in agreement.

Harry acquiesced, pressing the keys softly with three of her fingers, an arpeggio sounding. At the sound of the arpeggio Harry's mind filled with bits of half-remembered songs and her fingers flew across the keyboard. The song in the forefront of her mind was the one they had just been taught, Ode to Joy.

Melodies and harmonies churned about her head, things she was certain she had never heard before, and her fingers hastened to complete movements that the instrument in front of her seemed eager for her to perform.

The adults gawked at her when the song was complete. Harry's hands felt strained and ache-y all of a sudden, as if she had been playing for hours, non-stop. She fancied that she could see calluses growing on her fingers as she watched.

Her Aunt Petunia leaned in closer to her and whispered breathlessly," How did you do that?"

Harry shifted a bit on the seat, rubbing her hands against her legs. "I don't really know. The piano was telling me about the songs that's been played on it and Ode to Joy was it's favourite. It insisted I play it."

Petunia Todd acquired an unholy gleam in her eyes. A smile settled on her face. She looked over at her surprised husband and told him, "We're getting a piano."

Later on, while they were heading back from the music classroom, Alice pushed Harry down the stairs.

Petunia had made sure the girl was expelled and pulled Harry out of St. Grogory's to be home-schooled.

Not exactly a happy ending to the conflict but effective none-the-less.

Cordelia pulled herself from her thoughts and stood from her desk. She stretched languidly before shuffling her papers into order. When she was done, she collected her jacket from the coat-rack next to her door and made to leave her office. She'd need an early night if she was to be energetic enough to keep up with Harry tomorrow during their shopping trip.

* * *

**T**he Todd boys (plus one chaperone) were lounging in their seats out on the patio of Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour, taking a bit of a break from their exploration of Diagon Alley. In their idleness, the walls of social convention came down, and their personalities were presented for observation. Ashford Todd, the studious one of the brothers, was idly slurping on a float while absorbed in one Harry's Herbology texts; Dudley Todd, the sports enthusiast, had shoved half an ice cream sandwich into his mouth while marvelling over the Bludger he had in his arms; Benedict Todd, the artistic one, had finished his banana split and was looking over Ashford's shoulder at the moving pictures of the textbook, stroking a new paint set — one for moving portraits — possessively. It was as if they were posing in character for a movie poster.

The boys had spent the last three hours combing through the obscenely colourful shopping district of Diagon Alley, poking their heads into every shop that had come across and generally dragging out the trip as much as they could, considering that their mother would most likely never allow them to come again. It had taken Harry's ability to lead them around by the their noses and Ms. Oglethorpe's ability to keep track of several things at a time that kept them from running off and getting lost. As it was, they still ended up in stores that didn't sell anything on Harry's school list and now had several bags of toys and amusing non-essentials — like board-games with pieces that talked and moved by themselves, and oil pastels that changed colour when you shook them — that would all have to be hidden in Harry's room, since that was the only place in the house where oddness was allowed.

"Whoa," Benedict exclaimed, snatching the textbook from Ashford to get a closer look.

"Give it back!" Ashford whined, making grabby hands at the book that was held out of his reach. Benedict held him back with a hand to his forehead, fingers mussing up the younger boy's brown hair, and held him there. "I was reading that!"

Benedict ignored him for the moment. "Hey, Dud, come check this out; this plant thing has all these wicked looking spikes and eats raw meat!"

"Seriously?" Dudley lumbered over to look. Both older siblings paid no mind to Ashford's usual whinging and instead exclaimed over the coolest plant they had ever seen.

"I'm serious!" Ashford scowled. "I'll tell Harry you're picking on me again!"

Unfortunately for Ashford, instead of seated at the table where she could been of any help, Harry Potter was across the cobblestone road, just in shouting distance of where the Todd children sat poking at their ice cream, inside a little shop where she had scampered off to when she had finished her own sundae.

The bright afternoon sunlight filtered through the pink-tinted windows of Santana's Stationary, casting the notebooks and parchment scrolls sitting under the window in a warm, rosy glow. Two children stood in front of the notebook display, one, dressed in a crisp, teal sun-dress, carrying on excitedly — though she tried to play it cool — while the other, in fashionably baggy cargo pants and brightly white hoodie, listened politely, nodding in agreement and making sounds of acknowledgment when it was expected.

"So, you see," The girl continued. "I'll just breeze my way through to the top of the social ladder —"

Harry couldn't help but clench her hands in the material of her over-sized hooded jacket, the stretchy, white cloth of the pockets where she hid her hands straining to not tear under the abuse of her thick fingernails. Her face felt tight from her efforts to keep her expression from twisting into a look of bored impatience. She could only hope that the source of her displeasure — a chattering brunette that thought far too much of herself — would not follow her out of the stationary store when Harry finally found an appropriate time to cut the conversation short.

Harry had come in to grab the parchment she couldn't get at the book-store — the last thing she needed before they could finally get to the wand shop — when she had be waylaid by Miss Pansy Parkinson — "Of the _Norfolk_ Parkinsons, none of that Lincolnshire trash." — who had been debating between purple-coloured or strawberry-scented parchment. Before Harry could nod politely and be on her way, she was trapped by an oral dissertation concerning which type of parchment would impress the most classmates, and how it would win her favour from the teachers, and how those teachers should adore her anyway since she was a _Parkinson, _and she was such a special snowflake since all Parkinsons were above and beyond, ya know?

Harry was imagining the satisfaction she would get from clawing the girl's eyes out.

Truthfully, Harry's patience had been thin before the day had even started. Aunt Petunia's musical charity-dinner thing had gone on late into the night, the award ceremony for the placing contestants, taking up even more time after everyone had been fed and watered. They had gotten home near two in the morning, leaving Harry with only three and a half hours of sleep. That Aunt Petunia made sure she woke up at half five, to squeeze in time to practice scales and do stretches before she left at eight irritated Harry to no end, especially considering she wouldn't being performing at any more events until at least next summer.

Harry was convinced that the early wake-up call had been done purely out of spite.

Spiteful was easily the most apt description Harry could think of when in the mind of her aunt's faults. She would insist on the most useless things — like Harry wearing her pink work-out shorts instead of her grey ones — simply because she knew Harry hated it. Petty was another good one; no one could be as frivolously mean as Petunia Todd when she was in one of her moods. She had almost forbidden Benedict, Dudley, and Ashford from coming along on the shopping trip simply because Ashford was looking a bit too excited about going! It was only her haste to get to some high-society brunch on the other side of town that kept her from rescinding her previous permission.

Harry's bout of ruffled impatience did not disappear even when Ms. Oglethorpe had arrived to pick them up, though she did try to not take it out on the older woman since she had nothing to do with it and was doing them a favour. Dudley and Ashford had grown rowdy during their wait for Ms. Oglethorpe, talking about all the vaguely dangerous things the were hoping to see and do in Diagon Alley, and it had been left up to Harry to keep them from getting destructive, since their nanny wasn't working until that evening and Benedict was too smug from riling them up in the first place to keep them pacified.

As it was, Harry was ready to choke all three boys with their own tongues by the time they reached The Leaky Cauldron.

"So help me, Benedict Todd," Harry had warned the wide-eyed thirteen years old boy she had by the collar of his t-shirt. The normally laid-back girl held him captive in the back of the car while the other three had already gotten out. "If you goad them into any nonsense — like eating something out of the barrels at the Apothecary — I'll turn you into a toad and dump you in a tank at the pet store."

While the threat had been taken seriously and Harry had left the confrontation in a better mood, and she had been immensely delighted by being allowed to explore the shops as long as she wanted, that didn't mean she wasn't still on the edge of kicking the arse of the next person that looked at her funny.

Cue pug-nosed princess that liked to hear herself talk.

" — engagement with the Malfoy heir only adding onto the list of reasons why the girls will — "

What deity had she angered in a past life to deserve such a crappy turn of events? She _hated_ talking to conceited high-society children, the girls in particular, because they all seemed to have some deep-seeded, subconscious _need _to show off to her or show her up, as if she _cared _in any way about their qualities.

Was there a sign of her forehead that said 'Please, Brag Here!' that was only visible to people other than herself? It was only her abhorrence of incivility that beat back her uncharitable comments and kept her in place long enough for the person talking at her to feel as if Harry had really been listening.

Nod along as they make their points, Harrington, her Aunt Petunia had drilled into her, and make sure you lean in ever so slightly, as if you can't bear to be away from the conversation. Make sure you watch their face carefully as they talk, eyes appropriately wide, as if whatever they are saying is the most fascinating thing you've ever heard. Appear to be significantly impressed by whatever drivel they're going on about and they'll tell tales about how impressive _you _are.

Now here she was, practised mannerisms in place, and she couldn't turn them off, since she couldn't bear being rude. She tucked a loose curl back under the knit cap that she had shoved all of her hair in and combed her bangs with her fingers in agitation.

And the Parkinson girl was _still _chattering on!

"Lilac is my favourite colour but they only had the fabric I wanted in _yellow _of all colours, so I told them — " Parkinson cut herself off abruptly, almost swallowing her tongue with how quickly she pulled back in the breath she was going to use to keep talking. She looked like she wanted to frown, hiccup, and burp, all the same time; not an attractive expression.

"I _thought_ I heard the ear-splitting yowls of a cat in heat," interrupted a derisive voice from behind Harry. "And it turns out I was right; here you are, Pansy, dear."

Harry turned to look upon the face of her salvation. Anyone that could shut up that girl by just being in sight had a leg up in Harry's good books, even if they did sound very rude.

There were _two_ people standing there actually, a tall boy with a stony face, and a pleasantly plump girl.

It had been the girl that had spoken. She was older than Harry and Parkinson, maybe thirteen or fourteen, with sort of in-between hair — the sort that couldn't decide if it wanted to be blonde or brown — that was fixed up in Dutch braids. Her passably pretty face was set in a look of disdain mixed with pity, while she had a hand on her hip, as if she was posing for a picture. She was a model of condescending superiority.

Harry felt as if she had been dragged into a television drama, during the episode where the two main female antagonists finally let loose in a cat-fight. She only hoped they would give her a chance to make a break for it before nails went scratching.

"Brocklehurst," Parkinson finally said, as if it pained her to concede in even acknowledging she knew the older girl. "And Flint too. How nice to see you again." She couldn't have sounded any less pleased if she had been screaming in agony.

"I had wondered who you could be talking to that could prompt you into using your most dulcet tone," Brocklehurst continued, not acknowledging Parkinson's stiff greeting. She sauntered closer, arms folded in front of her. "You only ever speak like that when little Malfoy is the ear you're chattering into and I know for a fact _he _won't be back in England until tomorrow. So whoever could it be?"

She stopped in front of Harry and looked her up and down. "And so I thought to myself, whoever it is would have to be perfectly singular.'" Her gaze slowed, and she took Harry in more appreciatively, a smirk appearing as she assessed Harry's face. She murmured, "Perfectly singular indeed."

Harry restrained a squirm of discomfort.

Harry resolved to avoid Pansy Parkinson from now on; the girl seemed to know others just as unpleasant to be around as herself. She automatically slipped a pleasant look on her face, and inclined her head at the older girl, nodding at the boy as well. "It's very nice to meet you. I'm Harry."

The Brocklehurst girl looked a bit surprised. Probably because Harry was being polite. Harry could understand, she herself would expect anyone hanging around Parkinson to be highly unpleasant. A genuinely pleased smile light up the older girls face, and Harry could honestly say that she looked much nicer and prettier that way.

"Mindy," she said, shooting a look at the boy. "I'm Melinda Brocklehurst but I prefer Mindy. This" — here she tugged forward the stoic-faced boy that looked like he couldn't be bothered to care either way — "is Marcus, my best friend. It's very nice to meet you, too."

The Flint boy — never had there been a name more appropriate — looked unimpressed but inclined his head as well when Brocklehurst gave him a pointed look. His previously stony expression contorted into a lowered brow and a displeased twist of his lips. The expression suited him utterly and Harry couldn't help but like him the best out of the trio of people she wished would just leave her alone; she admired how little he gave a damn that he didn't bother putting up a good public face. She could only hope that she could one day be that genuine as well.

"Did you need something?" Parkinson cut into the pleasantries curtly, her tone sour.

Brocklehurst frowned disapprovingly at the reminder of Parkinson's existence. "Besides wanting to relieve my curiosity, I figured I could save whatever hapless victim you had your claws in."

"How dare you? We were having a lovely conversation before you butted in!"

"Oh, a conversation, was it? It looked to me as if you were prattling on and keeping this person here from their shopping."

Harry heard the clock in the shop chime one o' clock and couldn't help but glance out the window at where her cousins were sitting. Dudley looked extremely bored and was gazing forlornly through the window at her while Benedict had taken out his equipment and was painting on Ashford's arms. She should probably get going before they started annoying Ms. Oglethorpe. She still needed to get her wand too.

The two girls facing off in front of Harry looked like they were ready to verbally rip each other to shreds; she could almost see the acid dripping from their tongues. Harry noticed that Flint looked rather resigned and she wondering if this was a reoccurring conflict.

Harry cleared her throat and smile sheepishly at the three when she recaptured their attention. "I'm sorry to cut this short but it's one now and my family's waiting for me outside. I really do have to go."

"Oh," Parkinson said, a touch of disappointment tingeing her petulant voice. She glared at Brocklehurst as if it was all her fault. The older girl just re-crossed her arms and stared challengingly back. "Fine, then. Perhaps you'll find me later on the train."

"Maybe," Harry agreed. Privately, she was considering going to Hogwarts in disguise if it meant she could avoid Parkinson. She raised a hand in farewell as she retreated with her purchases. "Lovely to meet you all."

* * *

**"H**arrington Jamison Potter, what have you done to your_ hair!?_" Petunia wailed, a hand grasping at her throat. A broken plate was at her feet, intermixed with globes of scrambled eggs and chunks of fruit.

The Todd family, minus Michael Todd who was currently flying over the Atlantic, was sitting down to breakfast at the informal table in the kitchen, two weeks before the end of summer, when Petunia's eyes had alighted on her niece ambling down the stairs toward them. She had just returned from a weekend gathering with some charity group she worked with, and had looked forward to a quiet summer Monday with her children.

All thoughts of relaxation fled and a yelp of horror had escaped her. Her hold on the plate in her hands faltered, resulting in a wasteful spill of food.

"Really, Auntie," Harry sighed as she entered the kitchen. She frown at the mess on the floor and went to grab some paper towels, the dust bin, and floor disinfectant from the cupboard under the sink. Spray bottle in hand, she waved away the still gaping older woman as she knelt down and set to cleaning. "Dudley already broke one dish from this set; we hardly needed to lose another."

"Your hair!" Harry's aunt cried again, now pointing at it as if they couldn't tell exactly where the hair was by themselves. "All your lovely hair! What possessed you to cut it? And so short!"

Harry dumped the ruined food and shards of broken crockery in the bin before fluffing the curly bob that brushed around her chin and the base of her neck. She tilted her head and gave her aunt a mildly peeved look from underneath her fringe before setting to fixing another plate of food. Spooning up some more egg, Harry said, "Honestly, it's just hair. It'll grow back."

"But _why?_" Petunia sat down heavily in her chair, as if the sight of the usually waist length hair now shorn and unruly made her feel faint.

"_We-ell,_" Harry drew out, casting an imploring look at the boys who were staring at their plates in rapt fascination, studiously avoiding getting involved in the conversation. Thanks a lot, guys, Harry thought. "Yesterday, we were all playing outside with the neighbour kids and some of them brought along their friends that were visiting for the day. It turns out that Brigitte Hotchkiss from three doors down is friends with the little sister of one of the girls in my gymnastics class, one of the ones that really hate me. She knew I lived near Brigitte, so she told her younger sister to stick gum in my hair when I wasn't looking."

"That miserable little brat! You can be certain I'll be calling her mother the second I get their number from your teacher. Did she really shove it in?"

"Um, actually, she stuck it near the bottom. I thought I could just trim it a bit but _somebody,_" Harry threw a pointed look at Benedict who was trying to look as insignificant as possible, "bumped my shoulder while I was cutting it, and it came out uneven. So, I had to cut it again. It ended up between my shoulder blades, and you know I hate it at that length since it _never _stays in any style when it's that length and it gets all hot and clingy, so I hacked it to around my shoulders and called it done."

"And of course, because the weight holding it down is missing, it curled up further after a washing, turning even wilder, and is now completely unmanageable," Petunia added with exasperation. "Didn't you realize that without enough weight, it would stick up and out instead of down? You look like one of those hooligan boys that waste their days away at that dumpy skate park."

"It's not that bad!" Harry protested, setting the new plate of food in front of her aunt, and digging into the parfait she made for herself out of plain yoghurt and the fruit salad the boys were avoiding eating.

"It's defying the laws of gravity," Petunia said sourly. "A squirrel could make a nest in there and you would never notice."

"It _does _look like a briar bush," Ashford chimed in. He was sitting next to Harry and leaned in to carefully stick a fork in her hair. Before either ladies could protest, he drew his hand back and looked in awe as Harry's hair seemed to have swallowed the fork whole, showing no sign of holding anything within it's comb-breaking tangles.

"Ash!" Harry exclaimed, digging into her hair for the fork. It took a few seconds, but she withdrew the eating utensil and gave the younger boy a frosty look. He grinned sheepishly and took back the fork.

"That better not have had food on it, or I'll put the fear of God in you," She said, waving her spoon at him.

"This is a nightmare! We can't do _anything_ with it at that length. Imagine how ridiculous you'll look in your nice dresses with that mop. You'll have to wear extensions now!"

"Don't be silly, I'll be going off to school in a few weeks and they'll hardly care if I'm dolled up like a little princess there. You won't be able to set anything up until winter break at the soonest and that's plenty of time for it to grow back; you know how fast it grows."

As it always happened when Harry's school was brought up, Petunia clammed up and refused to continue with the conversation. With a displeased "Hmph!" she placed her plate in the sink and walked off without another word.

"Way to make mum stop mid lecture," Dudley praised around the bacon and toast in his mouth. He swallowed and said, "All you have to do is always be reading one of your school books or play with the new toys and she'll never be able to say anything to you again."

"You say that like I should _want _Aunt Petunia to completely avoid me."

"I would if I was you," Benedict cut in. An unhappy look crossed his usually jolly face. "It's always what you look like and how well you can do something when you talk to mum. I don't know how you do it all the time. It sounds terrible, but when she pours all her attention on you, I can't help but be relieved that she doesn't expect anything from me like she does from you."

"And you always keep up with what she wants so easily," Ashford added. "but if _you _do something wrong, she gets angrier than when _we _do something wrong."

"When the world thinks you're perfect, it waits for you to fail," Harry explained, gathering up the empty breakfast plates. "And when the thing that seems too good to be true fails in some way, it disappoints you more than one would expect." She walked over to the sink began washing the dishes.

"And _I'll _be the one dumped with all those expectations soon." Ashford's shoulder slumped and he looked deeply dejected. "With you three off at boarding school, mum will have no one else but _me_ to pay attention to."

"I doubt it'll be as bad you think," Harry attempted to console him. "Auntie doesn't care much what you lot do during the day so long as you tell the nanny where you'll be, and come home at a reasonable time. If you hang out at the library or at one of your friend's houses, I'm sure she'll be too occupied by whatever she gets up to to torment you much."

"Yeah, Ash," Benedict agreed. "Just look busy when she's around and you'll be golden."

They all then agreed that a game of four-square would be an excellent way to get out of the house and forget up Petunia Todd's nightmarishly high expectations.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: **This is a bit longer than I usually make my chapters. I actually had trouble writing this one in the beginning, and then one evening I just sat down and wrote six pages before I even realized it.

* * *

**T**here were several things that Harry Potter disliked very much. So large was the number of those things, that Harry had felt compelled to write out a comprehensive list of all of them, and the reasons why she disliked them when Aunt Petunia had insisted that she practised her handwriting. The list had included but were not limited to things such as soft-boiled eggs, small talk, flavoured milk, fancy knickers, and peel-off nail polish; things that were either frivolous, unnecessary, a waste of time, or a combination of the three. Unfortunately, she had long come to accept that there was no escaping things she disliked; such was the way of the world, especially when the person in charge of her life had great fondness for the things she disliked.

That was not to say that weren't just as many things she _did _like, because there were likely just as many, if not more, things she that she did; Harry had written another list with those in mind when her first list had depressed her. She enjoyed rollerblading, playing with her Snitch, the way her hair broke her aunt's combs, reptiles, and spicy foods. Halfway through writing the list, she had decided that she would be better off enjoying herself with those things instead of just writing them down, and declared her task of practicing her hand-writing sufficiently completed.

When her minded wandered during the hours she practiced the music she always practiced, she had often wondered if life — at least _her _life — was full of wonderful things, with unpleasant things tossed in to make her enjoy what she liked even more when it came, or if instead it was full of wretchedness with happiness sprinkled around, so she would be even more miserable when she dealt with things she disliked, because she would know that the things that made her happy were out of reach. She would then give herself a sharp smack to the cheek for be self-centered — Really, why would the universe go through the trouble of being so bothersome just for _her_? — when there were so many others out there that had it worse.

_That _train of thought led her to listing the things in her life that she was sure less ungrateful children would jump at the chance to have. She then was unsure if she felt better about herself or not, but certain that she _should _be.

Then it came to things she hated. Harry spent quite a bit of her time, self-imposed and involuntary, with only her thoughts for company, and therefore knew herself well enough to know that she really didn't have the self-determination to hate. She wasn't an enthusiastic enough person to pull it off. Oh, sure, she often said that she hated things: "Can't I just use the regular kind instead? I really do hate how this nail rubbish scrapes off so easily," or "I hate these silly things! Why do they need flowers and bows on them? What's wrong with plain white knickers?" However, hate was a strong, fierce feeling; strong and fierce was not the way anyone would describe her. There wasn't much that she cared enough about either way that she could be coaxed into hate.

The dressing and styling of her hair was something Harry hated beyond words.

Her breath hitched and tears trailed down Harry's cheeks from her tightly shut eyes as the young witch submitted herself to the torture of her aunt taming her hair. There was an extra oomph of enthusiasm about it today, as if Harry's misbehaving locks had personally offended the older lady and she was after her well-deserved revenge. Harry offered no word of protest, having learned years ago that there would be nothing stopping or easing Aunt Petunia when she was wrangling those unruly curls into a semblance of neatness.

It was around eight o' clock on the morning of September 1st and Harry had been snagged straight from when she had been leaving the shower by her aunt set to do _something _with Harry's newly shorn hair. Hair gel, hairspray, hair wax, mousse, leave-in conditioner, combs, brushes, pins, a hair thinner, a pair of scissors, and _baby powder _of all things had greeted her when the girl had allowed herself to be pulled into her aunt's bathroom but had incredulously asked exactly what Petunia thought she would be able to do with it.

With a towel wrapped around her pajama clad shoulders, Harry cursed herself for tempting fate.

"Quit your whinging, I'm almost done," muttered Petunia. She ran uncompromising fingers through the hair she had coaxed from anti-gravity ringlets into the soft waves she was now braiding into a tight, short tail. The wonders of hair-care products would never cease.

Harry suppressed a groan, pressing her fingers to where her forehead met her hairline in a half-hearted attempt to soothe her scalp. Uncomfortably tight was how her aunt always did it.

Harry heard a scoffing sound before a hand waved at the bag of hair pins. She wordlessly offered up another pin. Rolling the braid up into a small bun at the base of her head and tucking the end up out of sight, Petunia said, "You know as well as I do that this mop will be fighting for its freedom as soon as it finishes drying, and the only way it'll stay is if the braid is as tight as it can be."

Fingers combed through the damp fringe that had been allowed to remain free this time around. Since Harry was getting done up for the train ride to school, Petunia had decided that make up would be too much. That meant no foundation to cover Harry's scar. Her fringe would have to be in place instead.

Harry breathed a sigh of relief when the hands pulled away from her head, and her Auntie stepped in front of Harry to review her work. That relief soon turned to confusion when Petunia grabbed the bottle of baby powder.

"What are you — ?" Her line of inquiry paused when powdered hands ran over her damp hair, smoothing over her head. "What in the world are you doing?"

"Janine from my book-club read an article on the benefits of using baby powder on your hair. Apparently, it reduces the greasy look hair-gel leaves behind but doesn't take away from the shine. If it can add on to the illusion that your hair isn't the stuff of nightmares, I won't question it."

Harry thought that was a bit unfair, unruly as it was, her hair was well taken care of on top of being pleasingly sun-streaked; she had been asked before if she had ever considered selling it. "You act like it's hideous or something. It's only messy."

"Messiness when it can be avoided is unacceptable," Petunia replied primly, stepping over to the sink to wash her hands, signaling that she was finished.

Harry wasted no time booking it out of her aunt's bathroom and toward the sanctuary of her own room. Closing the door and locking it behind her, Harry leaned against it and sighed. Just a few more hours, she told herself, then she'd be free in the wind.

Harry padded over to the plain jeans and button-front ensemble she had lain out on her bed before she went for her shower and mechanically began putting them on, letting her thoughts wander once more.

September 1st had been the most highly anticipated day in Harry's life, topping out the book signing of the author of her favourite book series _and_ the day she got to watch her aunt take Alice Baumgardner and her parents to court for assault. The moment Harry had known for sure that she would be going to a school for magic, she counted the days restlessly. Here was the chance for her to embrace her innate oddness, to go where she wouldn't have to constantly be on her guard!

So, why was she also so terrified?

"Perfect time for irrational fear," Harry mumbled under her breath as she did up the last button of her long-sleeved shirt. She settled on her bed and stared unseeingly at her new school trunk that sat in front of her bookshelf.

Harry knew fully well that there was no sensible reason for her to be frightened of going off to school; children did it all the time, generations of them. On top of that, she would be among people like her, some from magical backgrounds, some just now discovering they were magic, but exactly like her in the fact that they could do things that were impossible for the majority of the world. She would find understanding and empathy; what was so scary about that?

Her fingers clenched around the cuff of the shirt she had been fidgeting while trying to convince herself that she was being silly. It wasn't really the act of going away to school that was bothering her, was it?

Deciding not to lie to herself any longer, Harry purposefully spoke out loud the _real _reason why she was so nervous. "I'll be going by myself," she said slowly and clearly into the empty room, making sure she didn't mumble it half-heartedly like the part of her that was still in denial actually wanted to.

Harry had never been away from home without her aunt before; none of her cousins had. Petunia Todd had been a constant — if mildly unpleasant –— presence in Harry's life from the moment she had first come to Number 6 Willow Way, and ever since the scare they had at the park a few years back, Petunia never let any of her children go beyond the surrounding houses by themselves, if they weren't at a friend's house. Add on top of that that the girls of the neighbourhood harboured an inexplicable hatred for Harry — meaning she didn't have any friends to visit in the first place — and it meant that she had never gone anywhere by herself before. That she would be going where her aunt could not — and _would not _— go with her, getting on a train filled with strangers, and leaving England all together made her terribly anxious.

Wasn't that ridiculous? After so much time spent wishing she could go out to do as she pleased and not have to worry about people thinking her strange, she was frightened by the very opportunity.

It wasn't like it was unexpected or shocking either, she had known for years that magical schools — at least ones like Hogwarts that specialized in more than just one or two branches of magic — would require students to live on campus, and she had been perfectly fine with that until recently. Harry didn't understand why it was suddenly such a big deal.

How strange it was that she wasn't making any sense even to herself.

* * *

**W**hen Harry had been pulled from public schooling to learn at home instead, the very first thing her aunt and uncle had given her was Webster's Encyclopaedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, a monster of a book, weighing nearly four kilos, that exercised her body as it exercised her mind. Uncle Michael had approved of the book because it also included dictionaries for French, German, Italian, and Spanish, since he had a love of languages; Aunt Petunia had approved of the book because it was an anthology and she loved things that were labelled 'unabridged' and 'the complete,' already gifting Harry with several other such omnibuses before; most importantly, Harry loved it because when she was reading from it, her relatives never tried to make her do any other school work. No one ever interrupted her when she was absorbed in her dictionary.

She actually went through a phase where she carried it everywhere with her and read it whenever she had a chance. Truthfully, she still did that, if only to have a reason to ignore people she wanted to avoid and to silently contradict those that claimed she was only a pretty face. Harry was all about economy of effort, not sparing a breath or motion she didn't have to, and the fact that she a means to accomplish so many of her goals — learning, exercising, avoiding, contradicting — literally at her fingertips made her supremely fond of her behemoth of a reference book.

When Harry discovered that she despised the way the children that her aunt made her interact with spoke haltingly, misusing and mispronouncing words left and right, she decided that she would pick a random word from her dictionary each day and use it properly in a sentence at least once that day. This of course led her to embarrassing many a society brat that thought to show-off to her how intelligent they were with big words by explaining exactly how they were getting the word wrong. It made her come off as a know-it-all but since she got exactly what she wanted — shallow twits leaving her alone — Harry decided that she was perfectly fine being a know-it-all.

* * *

**H**arry remembered the first time she ever cried for the want of anything. It was a very vivid memory considering she hardly remembered anything specific about that time of her life. She wasn't sure exactly how old she had been, but it must have been before her second birthday because her birth parents were still alive at the time. They — all of the Potters — had been seated at a long table, eating a late breakfast because James and Lily had been out late the night before and had slept in.

She had been sitting on a chair between her parents that was stacked high with pillows because her mother had refused to put her in a high-chair, claiming it would stunt her physical development. There had been a small plate in front of her, a saucer really, along with a pair of toy-sized fork and spoon. She couldn't remember if that had been the first time she had been expected to eat from a proper – albeit miniature – table setting, but she _did _remember that her cousin Jake had still been allowed to eat like the messy toddler he was.

Harry could only assume that her mother was determined to have her practising proper manners as soon as possible because when her father asked why she had a tumbler full of milk instead of a sippy cup, she had said, "I'll not coddle her into forming bad habits. Do you think she'll be able to use that silly cup at a formal dinner? I think _not._"

A mild argument broke out between her parents about whether Harry should be expected to have any sort of table manners at one and a half years old, James and Lily pointedly keeping out of the conversation, like they usually did, since it was obvious what their opinion was by the way their son was trying to dye his hair with pureed carrots.

Harry inadvertently resolved the issue without a word, mimicking what she had previously seen her father do with his own food when she realized that her mother was not planning on feeding her any time soon. Harry was generally a very low-maintenance child, having no problem with not always getting her parents' active attention.

In hindsight, the fact that she appeared completely amendable to eating like an adult — and managed it relatively well — likely made her mother decide that it was time to urge her out of toddlerhood.

"There's my clever little cabbage!" Harry's mother had cooed before shooting a pointed smirk at her disgruntled husband. She leaned forward toward Harry's little hands clutching at the silverware and adjusted the grip. "See, you hold them like this. You see how it's almost like I'm holding a quill?"

Harry's father scoffed. "For goodness' sake, Diane, how would she even know how to hold a quill?"

"I'm showing her now, am I not?"

"She's not even two!"

"You act like she'll stay one forever!"

Harry, already quite used to the bickering, reached for her glass of milk. It was then that she noticed the sippy cup in Jake's possession. In her baby mind, it was the loveliest thing she had ever seen, all covered in twinkling stars and swirling cosmos. She had never drank from a sippy cup before, not even a bottle for that long, actually preferring a glass, but at that moment, Harry wanted nothing more than to have that beautiful cup in her hands.

Harry interrupted the squabbling by tugging at her mother's sleeve.

"What is it, Harrington?"

"Want that," Harry said, pulling herself up on her knees on her heavily cushioned seat, placing a hand on the table to balance herself while she leaned forward and pointed at the sippy cup in Jake's hands.

"What is it that you want?" her mother asked, frowning a bit in the direction Harry's finger pointed at.

"Cup, Mumma, cup."

"You will _not_ be using one of those cups! A proper young lady does _not _use such a thing."

But Harry was insistent. She had never wanted anything as much as she wanted that ridiculous cup right then and she was determined to get it. She bounced on her haunches and kept pointing. "_Cup_, Mumma, _cu-up!_"

"That's quite enough! You will sit down right now and we're not going to hear any more about it."

"Really, Diane," Harry's father sighed. "Letting her have a sippy cup won't kill her."

"There's nothing wrong with her glass and she's never had a problem with it before. I will _not_ indulge her in this foolishness."

By this point, Harry had worked out that her mother refused to cooperate and she was tearing up in frustration. Why was her mother not getting her the pretty cup? Hadn't she always been a good girl? She deserved to have a cup of her own. Harry wanted it so badly. She wanted in badly enough that she degenerated into a temper tantrum.

"CUP! Want _CUP!_" She sat heavily back down on her chair and waved clenched fists in the air. When her parents only tried to soothe – or scold her into submission in the case of her mother – she flung herself backward on the chair and keened miserably, kicking her legs furiously in frustration.

It was obvious when her mother became fed up when Harry was hauled bodily from her seat by her waist and carried out of the dining room, given a sharp shaking as well. As her mother maneuvered her squirming form, she snapped, "ENOUGH! Behave yourself this instant or you'll be sitting in your crib for the rest of the day!"

"Diane!" came Harry's father's disapproving voice. He strode briskly toward them and kept pace as Harry's mother lead them toward the nursery. "Leave the poor girl alone! If you just let her have one of those cups from the beginning, we wouldn't have a bawling child on our hands."

"You're forgetting that she's having a tantrum over a blasted bottle! Are you trying to tell me I should have just indulged her in her childish wishes for whatever nonsense she thinks she needs?"

"She's not even two! She's supposed to be childish!"

Harry had been wailing all the while and it seemed her mother had reached the end of her patience. Throwing open the door of the nursery, her mother dropped her on the heavily cushioned cot of her crib before pulling her up slightly by a leg. That leg — specifically, the calf — was pinched with perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm, and Harry was startled into a yelp. Silence followed the yelp, Harry being shocked into wordlessness, even as her eyes filled with tears and brimmed over.

"Are you mad, woman! The girl isn't even two!"

"You keep saying that like it's supposed to mean something," Harry's mother said, crossing her arms over her chest and looking satisfied at Harry's silence.

"Of course it means something! You can't go physically abusing — "

"How dare you! I haven't abused her!"

"You just caused physical pain to a child barely out of babyhood; you just pinched a baby! I don't care your reasoning, that's wrong. And you keep acting like she's a child triple her age; exactly how developed and mature do you expect a baby to be? And you punish her when she doesn't understand what she obviously can't?"

"So you say! She understands _far_ more than you think. Stop thinking of her as a baby, as some lesser intelligent being, and start thinking of her as a person. A _little_ person, I grant you, but a person nonetheless. And as a person, she should be expected to follow the same rules of society any other person is expected to. That means unacceptable behaviour should be punished as with anyone else."

The bickering couple then ambled out of the room where the quietly weeping toddler lay, moving their debate elsewhere, satisfied in the thought that at least _that _problem had been more or less resolved.

Harry lay in the crib, writhing a bit in nearly painful frustration. She was being ignored. Her mother didn't care what she wanted. What she wanted was not at all important. She was not allowed what she wanted and if she tried to get it, she would be punished.

A choked sob wrenched its way out but Harry confined herself to mute misery. It had been made clear that noisiness was not acceptable. She fell into a fitful sleep, dreaming about sippy cups and angry faces.

That particular experienced resulted in a long-term dislike of formal eating utensils and the sound of raised voices, a dislike that was featured on the list of things she hated. In fact, they were right at the top of the list and made her uneasy just at the thought.

A similar event happened when Harry had already been living with the Todds for a handful of years. She had been seven years old and it had been the Easter break after her short-lived first year of formal schooling. They — as in her Aunt Petunia and she — had been at a garden party while her cousins and Uncle Michael had gone to the local park to go egg hunting.

Harry often wondered what the appeal of such gatherings were, especially since her aunt couldn't seem to get enough of them. Whenever there was even a hint of a group of ladies planning a get-together or a fund-raiser was being considered, Aunt Petunia was there, one of her smartly pressed dresses on, dragging an uninterested Harry along with her.

In that particular situation, they had been at the party for several hours already, Harry resigning herself to be fawned over for being "such a dear little poppet," Petunia soaking up the adulation that came with being always on the up and up concerning social events and being the guardian of a doll of a little girl that her niece was. They had finally sat down to a side table where a handful of other ladies were eating their lunch and Harry's aunt fixed them plates of finger food to nibble on.

While she had already been taught the fine art of nibbling on food instead of just outright eating it, Harry was sincerely hungry at that point and was ready to tear into a leg of boar like a wild animal. Unfortunately, Aunt Petunia filled her plate with things she found disgusting.

What on earth was that? That was a meat she had never seen before. Wait, was that chicken gizzard? Ew. Oh, God, stewed asparagus? Gag. Who eats that? Wasn't that — ? It was! It was covered in green pepper; Harry hated the taste of pepper.

It was as if some vengeful god was ready to smite her but then realized she was just a kid, so instead decided to possess her aunt into tossing together a pile of things that made her want to vomit, while he laughed at her plight as he reclined on his settee of heavenly cloud-matter.

The tosser.

Just as she was thinking that it couldn't get any worse, Aunt Petunia spooned roe onto her unappetizing plate. Fish eggs! What was the woman thinking? Harry didn't even like regular chicken eggs. She sat in mute horror at the nightmare she was supposed to eat. Maybe if she sat quietly and pretended to not exist, her aunt wouldn't make her eat it.

The hope was for naught; not two minutes after placing the Platter of Repulsiveness in front of her, her aunt looked over and frowned at her. "Why aren't you eating?"

"I really don't like anything on the plate," Harry replied quietly as to not offend their host.

"Nonsense, these are all high-quality dishes, don't be picky."

Harry nodded agreeably but did not move to eat even as her aunt looked away to rejoin her previous conversation. It was rather irritating that her aunt thought the fact that the food was rare and expensive would somehow make Harry want to eat it. If anything, it made her glad that she didn't have expensive tastes since clearly they were paying the big bucks for things she couldn't be paid to eat.

She sat poking at her plate for at least ten minutes before her aunt turned to assess her plate again. A pinched looked greeted the still full platter of now mixed nastiness. A harsh hand then gripped at her forearm and clenched around it tightly.

"_Harrington_," Aunt Petunia had whispered stiffly, her carefully grown fingernails digging into the flesh of Harry's arm, prickling painfully. "I told you to eat."

Harry tugged a bit at the hand restraining her but quickly gave it up as a lost cause; she wasn't at all strong enough to break a grown-up's grip. She met her aunt's eyes and whispered just as lowly, "I don't like _any_ of it. You should have just let me fix my own plate."

"It doesn't matter either way if you like any of it or not; I told you to eat it and you haven't."

"I don't — "

"That's enough out of you," her aunt had hissed. She withdrew her hand swiftly, and looked disapprovingly at Harry. "If you're going to be ridiculous about this, you can go without lunch altogether. Go play with the other children and stay out of my sight until I come to get you."

Aunt Petunia hadn't noticed that the other girls were too intimidated or jealous of her to want her around, resulting in Harry spending the next few hours sitting on a bench off the front lawn by herself, bored and irritated beyond words. She might have even spent the night sitting on that bench if it wasn't for a well-meaning older lady reminding Aunt Petunia that Harry was still sitting there. During her schmoozing, her aunt had actually forgotten about her.

It didn't take a genius to realize that Petunia didn't care one way or another about Harry's wants or choices, barely acknowledging her presence at all unless she wanted something from Harry. As it was, Harry couldn't remember a time when she thought Aunt Petunia or any of her high-brow posse cared one way of another what she thought and the angry frustration that it invoked constantly simmered under the surface of Harry's interaction with any of them. In a way, it was fortunate for her; since they didn't bother to look, they never noticed her disdain.

That disdain had been born when she was five and was still going strong now that she was eleven.

Harry often wondered if there was something wrong with her on a chemical level that made her able to hold a grudge for an arguably unreasonable amount of time over something she was sure others would consider a minor thing. Was that a behavioral disorder? She hoped it wasn't, but surely children should be more capricious?

Capricious was her vocabulary word for the day, meaning given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behaviour; like fickle and temperamental. Capriciousness would have had Harry not putting enough thought into her aunt's lack of genuine interest in her to nurse a grudge into existence to begin with. Capricious was something that Harry knew she was not.

* * *

**H**arry stood off to the side of the entrance of Platform 9 ¾, Ms. Oglethorpe looking over a scrap of paper next to her. It was just the two of them this time, Benedict already taken to his own boarding school a few days before, Dudley in London but shopping for uniforms with his friend Malcolm, and Ashford just plain not allowed to come.

Aunt Petunia had been stiff during their goodbyes, her posture rigid and her lips pursed unhappily. She had looked over Harry's luggage with a keen eye before asking, "You have everything with you?"

"Yes, Auntie," Harry had confirmed, standing just as stiff in the doorway of the house. Like with everything else magic related, her aunt refused to actually touch any of Harry's belongings, instead making Harry double and triple check that she had everything herself.

"You have your instrument?"

"Yes, Auntie." Harry nudged her viola case with her foot.

Aunt Petunia peered at the case. "Is that the violin or the viola?"

"The viola. I figured Ash could use my violin for at-home practice so he won't have to lug _his_ back and forth from school."

"Hmph, as you like. You have your drink mix and all your vitamins?"

"Yes, Auntie."

"_All _of them?"

Harry sighed as she reached for her supplement bag.

When Harry had first come to the Todds, she lost an alarming amount of weight. Her aunt and uncle had panicked until an astounded paediatrician had told them that for whatever reason, Harry needed to consume twice the amount of protein that the average child needed and half again the amount of calories. This led to a health craze with Aunt Petunia buying up disgustingly good-for-you things like plant-based protein powder that she mixed into Harry's drink at every meal and a myriad of dietary supplements. While they were only a passing irritation now, at the time, Harry had thought she was being dosed for some deadly disease.

Concentrated fruits and vegetables, fish oil, calcium magnesium, iron; vitamin C for the immune system; vitamin D for bones; vitamin A for skin; primrose capsules for feminine health; echinacea in case she caught a mild bug; garlic for the hell of it, and even a multivitamin tablet just because. All of the bottles were sitting neatly in the lightweight bag, squeezed in between packages of protein and meal-replacement formula. It looked like the bag of a nutjob who just robbed a pharmacy.

"All here," Harry said, waving the bag around a bit. As much as she resented her aunt for not appreciating her as a person, Harry couldn't deny that Aunt Petunia took good care of her children. The Todds were likely the healthiest kids in the neighbourhood.

They didn't linger long after that, Ms. Oglethorpe having pulled up while they had been discussing the viola. Harry had wasted no time putting her things in the trunk and climbing into the modest Ford Escort. She didn't bother turning to wave, knowing that her aunt was the only one still home and — judging by the way the door had shut immediately after her — wouldn't be waiting for a send-off.

* * *

**H**arry took in the gleaming red steam engine with detached awe. It was such an odd, eye-catching thing. It was amazing that such a thing could be hidden right under the noses of the muggles while clearly not trying to be subtle about being different in the least bit. It was as if all the meaning of being a wizard in this world that frowned on being different had manifested itself in the form of a train. An emblem for pride in oddity. Maybe she was seeing symbols where there were none, but Harry was struck by the almost poignant significance of that train; it said to her, "We may have been shunned and abused for being the way we are, but we will remain as we are and be proud. Even in hiding, we will celebrate."

Tears prickled at the corners of Harry's eyes before she quickly blinked them away. What a beautiful sentiment; the builders of the train should be proud.

"Are you alright?" Ms. Oglethorpe asked her, looking mildly concerned. She had looked up from the paper she had been reading.

"It's nothing. I was just appreciating the philosophical symbolism of the train. 'Bloodied but unbowed,' and all that. It's rather like that fellow from Braveheart, when he's in the middle of being executed, but instead of pleading for mercy like they demand of him, he shouts, 'Freedom!' instead. It's really very brilliant."

Ms. Oglethorpe assumed the expression that people often wore when they interrupted Harry mid-thought. It was one that questioned her sanity, but also their own intelligence since they had no idea what she was talking about but still felt like they should since Harry spoke in a tone that made everything she said sound perfectly logical.

The older lady smile lightly in confusion. "That's nice, dear." She then looked down at her watch. "We've still got twenty minutes before the train leaves but I suggest you get on now. Have you got a lunch for the ride?"

Harry patted her supplement bag. "I have some sautéed vegetables, grilled chicken, and some rice."

"No money for the snack trolley?" the brown haired woman frowned a bit before reaching for her purse.

"Oh, that's alright, ma'am, I'm not really allowed to have sweets anyway."

"Are you sure? Just this once shouldn't hurt."

"It's fine, really. I _do_ have a bit of pocket-money on me if I change my mind later."

"Alright then, dear. How about a hug then?" The older woman drew Harry into a squeeze and gave her hair a fond pet. "Here you are, all grown and going off to school when it feels like just the other day you were telling me how excited you were for your fifth birthday. You have some fun as well during all that learning, alright? Don't overwork yourself."

Harry nodded and smile. Ms. Oglethorpe was the only adult she knew that put more emphasis on fun and happiness than book learning. "I promise."

"Okay then, here's a note for the nurse." Harry was handed the scrap of paper the older lady had been reading over. "Your aunt got it from your doctor explaining your eating habits. Get a teacher to take you to the hospital wing as soon as you can. Now off you go."

With that, Harry was ushered onto the train. The two exchanged waves before Ms. Oglethorpe retreated from the platform, leaving the way they had come. Harry settled herself into an empty compartment, pulling out an appropriately intimidating book for the long ride, and allowed herself to relax for the first time that day.

* * *

**AN: **I know Braveheart came out in 1995 but let's just pretend for the sake of the story that it came out earlier. Artistic license and all that.


End file.
